Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/251

Rh taking easy possession, repeating old movements, looking from one to the other of the actors before the footlights. The rich "Good morning" that she threw into the air, holding out her hand to Biddy Dormer and then giving her left to Nick (as she might have given it to her own brother), had nothing to tell of intervals or alienations. She struck Biddy as still more terrible, in her splendid practice, than when she had seen her before—the practice and the splendour had now something almost royal. The girl had had occasion to make her courtesy to majesties and highnesses, but the flutter those effigies produced was nothing to the way in which, at the approach of this young lady, the agitated air seemed to recognize something supreme. So the deep, mild eyes that she bent upon Biddy were not soothing, though they were evidently intended to soothe. The girl wondered that Nick could have got so used to her (he joked at her as she came), and later in the day, still under the great impression of this incident, she even wondered that Peter could. It was true that Peter apparently hadn't.

"You never came—you never came," said Miriam to Biddy, kindly, sadly; and Biddy recognizing the allusion, the invitation to visit the actress at home, had to explain how much she had been absent from London, and then even that her brother hadn't proposed to take her. "Very true—he hasn't come himself. What is he doing now?" Miriam asked, standing near Biddy, but looking at Nick, who had immediately engaged in conversation with his other visitor, a gentleman whose face came back to the girl. She had seen this gentleman on the stage with Miss Rooth—that was it, the night