Fermor turned sharply round. "We have
come to hear this play," he said, "and to amuse
ourselves. By-and-by, we shall have time enough
for these reminiscences; so please, now——"
And he forced the rest of the sentence into a hard
smile and a hard nod.

She was sufficiently trained to see how thin the
ice was about this part. And she moved away
cautiously from the subject.

The three strokes of a mallet on the stage
made every flower rustle its leaves as if a breeze
had fluttered round, and the curtain went up.

L'Amour se Paie was after the true pattern—of
which regular "forms" seem kept in stock in
France. It was very long and all conversational,
and shifted from Madame Hautefille's drawing-
room to her garden and back again. When it
came to be printed by M. Dentu of the Palais
Royal, the reader found his page planted scantily
with a few lines of type, and each line boasted
a few meagre shrubs of words. Still it was
a marvel of neat wit—wit that is fined and
delicately grained with emery-powder, and real
ladies and gentlemen seemed to walk from Madame
Hautefille's drawing-room to her garden
and back again.

The way in which the truth, or aphorism, or
even hypothesis of L'Amour se Paie was set
before the audience, lay in working together a
financier of tempered fun, a marquise, a Paris
man of fashion, a simple artless school-girl,
and a "noble" tutor, suffering from his situation.
All during the first act these threads were
plaited languidly: a warp of conversation was
woven in volubly. The Exquisite showed his
exquisiteness, the simple girl her simplicity, the
financier his finance, and the "noble" tutor his
nobleness—yet nothing had been done. As the
act-drop came down there was applause from the
grown children crowded below, applause met
strangely by scornful laughs and a few hisses.
But as yet there was nothing to applaud, nothing
to condemn; the storming party were artfully
waiting their time, until, say the end of the third
act; when, waving their red flag, they would fly
at the redoubt and sack the doomed piece.

Captain Fermor, looking down from his loge,
which was high enough, and from a yet higher
balcon of lofty English disdain, said, with a curling
lip, "And they call this thing a play, do they?
What is it all about? Why, it isn't a patch upon
the Haymarket."

The fresh soft girl knew French—that is, the
French of men and women—thoroughly. Fermor
had some old building materials of that tongue,
bought at school, lying about in his head.

"Oh, but, Charles," she said, "that poor young
man, so chivalrous——"

"Do you mean that whining tutor?" he said,
contemptuously. "The whole thing is a bore.
It must fail. I wish," he added, putting up his
hand politely to stop a yawn, "I wish we had
gone to that other, what d'ye call it, spectacle."

The two Frenchmen still looked at the English
lady steadily. The corded one—mellowed with
good Medoc and coffee, and a little cognac on
the surface of the coffee, which, coming so near
the top, gave his cheeks and eyes a warm inflamed
tone—approved. He nodded approval to his
neighbour. He was thinking how it would be
compatible with his other little engagements to
—he would make up his mind before the play
was over.

CHAPTER II. A MEETING.

SECOND act. The mournful tutor was leaning
his forehead on his hand and trying to read. For
six francs a day he had to come and give a lesson
to the simple girl whom he loved. She has loved
her tutor, because, as she told her friend,
Mademoiselle Laroux, "he was the first man I had
ever seen, just as I was éprise of my first doll."
In truth, she had a leaning to the exquisite, who
was so pleasant with his Paris talk. Financier
again, tutor, marquise, school-girl, all in a check
pattern of talk; but no serious work.

At that moment there was a rustle and noise of
moving chairs close beside the English lady and
gentleman, with the sound of a box-door closing
like the click of a trigger. Three seats had been
vacant the whole night, guarded jealously. These
were now at last to be filled. Then there came
boldly down to the front, where she stayed a
moment drawn up to her full height for the house to
admire, a tall figure, lustrous and brilliant,
flashing under the lights with every motion. A
few beings of the parterre, not engaged in
tumult, instantly turned their backs to the stage
and levelled their glasses with effrontery. With
her also came a dark square-built young man,
with vellum cheeks and thoughtful meditative
eyes, and a second gentleman. But they were
in cold colours—dull sketches in greys and
neutral tints, beside her. They sat down together.
She continued to draw all eyes.

It was that bright radiant look which seemed to
reflect back the radiance of fascination. Her rich
black hair flashed back the light from a hundred
ripples. It hung over her white forehead, and
was gathered away to the right and left like the
heavy folds of a curtain. Her face was oval,
her eyebrows marked and arched, her eyes liquid
and dark, and, though brilliant, were not sharp
nor piercing, and, above all, her face seemed to
be lit up from within by a strange piquant
expression. But among the folds and draperies
of her hair (and this the opera-glass musketeers
in the parterre noted specially) was a rich scarlet
geranium placed with excellent effect, and,
carelessly dropping from her shoulders, was an
Eastern black and gold opera-cloak. She might
be a Jewess or a Spaniard.

The English girl was absorbed in the tutor and
his woes. She had never seen anything so
delightful. Fermor, with a curl of depreciation
on his lip, seen under the black opera-glass, was
slowly travelling round the house.

"I never saw such an exhibition," said he, not
taking the glass from his eyes; "but we must
stay, for I suspect there will be——"