Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/61

Rh "Two ladies—old acquaintances—whom I met in Paris a week ago and whom I have just been spending an hour with in this place."

"You should have seen them; they struck me very much," Biddy said to her cousin.

"I should like to see them, if they have really anything to say to the theatre."

"It can easily be managed. Do you believe in the theatre?" asked Gabriel Nash.

"Passionately," Sherringham confessed. "Don't you?"

Before Mr. Nash had had time to answer Biddy had interposed with a sigh: "How I wish I could go—but in Paris I can't!"

"I'll take you, Biddy—I vow I'll take you."

"But the plays, Peter," the girl objected. "Mamma says they're worse than the pictures."

"Oh, we'll arrange that: they shall do one at the Français on purpose for a delightful little English girl."

"Can you make them?"

"I can make them do anything I choose."

"Ah, then, it's the theatre that believes in you," said Gabriel Nash.

"It would be ungrateful if it didn't!" Pater Sherringham laughed.

Lady Agnes had withdrawn herself from between him and Mr. Nash, and, to signify that she, at least, had finished eating, had gone to sit by her son, whom she held, with some importunity, in conversation. But hearing the theatre talked of, she threw across an impersonal challenge to the