lady's-maid to her young mistress, that was
entirely out of the question. But there was,
luckily, no need of her services in that respect,
for a dresser, belonging to the theatre, a woman
experienced in her business, was in attendance
each night in "Miss Bell's" room. On the
evening succeeding that spoken of in my last
chapter, Mabel and her somewhat uncouth-
looking Abigail, the rustic ruddiness of whose
cheeks defied even the glare of the gas-lights,
arrived at the stage door of the Royal Thespian
Theatre at their usual hour.

The interior of a theatre by daylight is always
taken to be a strange anomalous scene; but I
doubt whether the same scene, just before the
hour of opening the doors to the public in the
evening, be not in its way as singular to an unaccustomed eye, and equally far from revealing
any promise of the bright pictures to be presently
exhibited to the many-headed now waiting
outside in the summer evening sunshine.

There is a bustle and a constant succession
of arrivals at the stage door, it is true. That
dingy portal swings to and fro ceaselessly; the
well-worn cords running swiftly over the pulley
as the great leaden weights fall and cause the
door to slam to with a creaking jar. Servants,
supers, carpenters, dressers, scene-shifters,
crowd in with a careless nod or hasty "good
evening "to the doorkeeper, who sits in his own
small pen hung round with playbills, and takes
note of each one as he or she enters. By-and-by
the performers begin to arrive, and occasionally
a letter or newspaper is reached down from
the little pigeon-holes in the hall, each with a
letter of the alphabet painted over it. The
narrow wooden staircase leading up to the
stage is feebly lighted by a single gas-burner.
The various employés of the theatre troop up it
one after the other, dispersing at the top each
to his separate department—scene-room, dressing-
room, property-room, or wardrobe. But on
the great stage itself all is silence. The scene
is not yet quite set, and the depth of the
spacious stage is revealed even to the back wall
of the building. There are great chasms and
caverns of shadow, for the theatre is not entirely
lighted up, nor the gas turned on to its full
power. The front of the house is vast and
ghostly, with a ray of light shining in here and
there from the lobbies through the half-open
box doors. The dingy holland covers that
shield the gilding and velvet from dust, still
drape the wide semicircle like a pall, and
glimmer spectrally through the gloom. The
orchestra is a black gulf, like a giant grave
newly dug, and yawning just in front of the
crimson stalls. Up above in the lofty roof the
great chandelier looms vaguely with an undefined
outline. It might be floating self-poised
over the wide space beneath, for aught that can
be discerned of its supports. By-and-by it will
sparkle and flash like an enormous diamond,
and the boxes will shine in scarlet and gold
and white. The black orchestra will be full of
light and sound, and careless fiddlers will laugh
and chat, and glance nonchalantly about them
as they tune their instruments. There will be
no shadow, no vagueness, no mystery. Only
the great canvas act-drop will shut out the
audience from the actors, and divide two realms
differing as widely from each other as any
kingdoms that were ever sundered by a political
boundary line!

Mabel arriving at the theatre with her
country servant on this especial evening of
which I write, and going into her dressing-room,
found it lighted up, and the toilet-table set forth,
but the woman who usually attended on her was
not there. She began to dress, however, with
Betty's assistance (rendered very tremblingly,
and with an overpowering sense of her own
unfitness for the task), and it was not long before
a tap at the door announced the arrival of the
dresser. "Come in, Davis," said Mabel. But
it was not Davis who entered. The person
who came into the room bearing a large shallow
open basket containing Juliet's satin train, was
a tall woman in a bright print gown, the body and
skirt of which had parted company in sundry
places. She had an elaborate gilt comb in her
tow-coloured hair, and was extremely smart,
but not extremely clean.

"Is Davis not here to-night?" asked Mabel,
seeing the unexpected figure in the looking-
glass, without turning her head.

"No, miss; she is not, miss. Davis is bad
with influenzy, and the housekeeper has sent
me as her substitoot. I dresses the ladies in
number three, miss, but there's nobody in my
room to-night, so——"

Whilst the woman was speaking, Mabel
turned to look at her, struck by something
familiar in the sound of her voice.

"Surely I know you, do I not?" she said.

"Oh yes, miss. Most unconvertibly you know
me, sure enough! Hammerham, miss."

"To be sure!" cried Mabel, into whose
cheeks a tide of recollections caused a bright
colour to mount and then to fade as quickly.
"I remember you now quite well. You are
Mrs. Hutchins. But how strange to find you
here!" she added, wonderingly. For Miss
Fluke had not failed to sing pæans over
Mrs. Hutchins's conversion from novel reading,
and such like iniquities, and to hold her up
as a bright example of the admirable results
of her own eloquence. Indeed, Mrs. Hutchins
had been at one time a kind of recruiting
sergeant under that spiritual Amazon; and had
harried her neighbours and friends in the good
cause with much zeal. During the progress of
Mabel's toilet, Mrs. Hutchins proceeded to give
a voluble account of the causes that had led
to her leaving Hammerham. In the financial
crash which had ruined great houses, little ones
had suffered also. Mr. Hutchins was suddenly
thrown out of work by the failure of his
employer, and was glad to be taken on temporarily
by the head carpenter of the Hammerham
theatre. Thence—being a sober steady man
who knew his business—he got to London; his
friend, the theatrical head carpenter, having
procured him a situation. "Hutchins was at
a east-end house at first, miss," said Mrs.
Hutchins, winding up her recital. "But we've