The Heart of Lord Mandeville

A! your lordship!" cried Miss Peggy Pommeroy, turning her celebrated blue eyes roguishly upon Lord Mandeville.

They sat together upon the striped sofa in the green-room of the Little Theatre, Haymarket; she, for his entertainment, passing comments on each actor and actress who lingered (in the vicinity of the mirror) awaiting the call, or hurried through to the curtain. His lordship listened, all insolent languor. At rare intervals a little snort would escape him—his nearest approach to laughter. And if he were moved to such expressions of amusement, it was not so much with Miss Pommeroy as at her. Yet it was all glory for Peggy to have him beside her—the most notorious roué upon the town, and the most fastidious. There were ladies—and great ladies, too, as she was aware—who would lightly have given all their admirers for Lord Mandeville's indolent notice. What mattered it that she well knew, in her heart, how empty was this conquest; well knew that not a smile or a frown in her whole repertory had really the power to charm him; that he but lolled at her side because, having drifted into the green-room, this weeping autumn night, he was simply too lazy to move again, and pulled her curls with no more emotion than he played with the seals at his fob? The others knew naught of all this, and it was enough for Peg. Oh, how her great eyes shone and ogled! How arch was she, and how coy! How her ripe lips smiled, and how loud (as each new-comer entered the room) they rebuked some unexistent ardour! Of all passions, vanity is perhaps that which, gratified, affords the most complete and lasting satisfaction. Peg's bosom swelled with triumph as she noted the impression produced upon her colleagues—how the Noble Father frowned and strutted with fresh zest as he passed; how her dear rival, feigning to examine the position of a patch, sought to catch his lordship's eye in the mirror, and failed.

"La! your lordship!" cried Peggy, very loud and shrill, "I vow I must not listen when you say such things!"

Lord Mandeville opened his heavy lids a little wider for an instant and almost hesitated on speech. It would have been hard indeed for Miss Pommeroy to have listened, for he had not uttered anything more audible than a grunt these five minutes. But Miss de Vyne (the dear rival) could not be aware of this; and the glance of furious envy that she darted at her friend as she now flounced out of the room filled that young lady with ecstasy. She had, moreover, succeeded beyond her intention. For, just before Miss de Vyne's exit, Mr. Montagu Mortemar had made his entrance, and, for the first time in his life, he seemed to become really aware of Peggy Pommeroy's existence.

Now, of all men on earth, the First Comedy Lady most admired the Tragic Leading Gentleman. Before the native grandeur of his pale brow all the coronets in the world were lustreless in her sight; but to show him with what high-placed friends she could on occasions consort—that was truly a moment worth living for!

Mr. Mortemar's part was done for the night: he had just been conclusively stabbed, had gulped forth his last blessing and his last curse, and his corpse had duly been carried away by lamenting retainers. He was stalking down the length of the room, at his best tragedy manner, when the arch cry struck his ear. He started, turned; elevated one eyebrow to anguish, depressed the other to menace. His hand was on his hip. (If anyone could have thought him more noble than he thought himself, it was Peggy Pommeroy.) Perceiving, however, the identity of Miss Pommeroy's admirer, a change came over him. With a sleeking of his whole attitude, he bowed profoundly and approached.

"We are honoured to see your lordship among us! I trust, my lord, you will permit me to recall myself to your lordship's recollection—I had the honour of meeting your lordship at the 'Three Tuns.’"

"Had you?" said his lordship. He tilted his head further back on the sofa-cushions to gaze at Mr. Mortemar, and wished vaguely that "the mummer would stop smiling."

The tragedian's fingers trembled round his snuff-box. His lordship's affability was great: did it justify the happy recipient in offering a pinch?

"Your lordship has seen my 'Altamont' to-night? Connoisseurs are kind enough to tell me that they prefer it to Davy's. But poor little Davy!" He paused: Lord Mandeville was yawning outrageously.

"Oh—Davy!" echoed Miss Pommeroy with great contempt, running a fervid glance over Altamont's fine proportions.

The room had begun to fill about them—the Tragedy was over, the Farce would begin anon. The First Villain—in private life an irrepressibly jovial soul—clapped his late victim brutally on the back, crying:

"What cheer, my buck! Curse me if ever we did the business finer than to-night!"

A wan smile curled Mr. Mortemar's lips. "We!"

Mrs. Macnamara, this evening "Zenobia, wife of the Mountain Chief," in brocade and powder, progressed towards the centre of the room, surrounded by "mountain maidens" in tiffany and straw hats. She was thinking ardently of supper; but at sight of Peggy and her lounging lord, she halted with marked disapproval. And still the company grew larger, between the two plays. Many accepted patrons strolled in from the side-boxes—Mr. Stafford, fine, bright and clean-cutting as his own ready sword, doomed (as was already known behind the scenes) to approaching matrimony, but taking the life of London Town with renewed gallantry for his last fling. After him, Captain Spicer, that noted guide of youth. No one could tolerate the creature, yet he knew everyone, he went everywhere. The name of his whilom regiment was a mystery; but there was little mystery about his present occupation. He had a military eye, albeit affected by strabismus, for a country recruit, a celebrated gift for drilling the bumpkin in the manœuvres of the world; and if, at the end of a campaign, the gallant instructor's pockets were heavy and his recruit's correspondingly light, why, it showed that the latter's education was complete.

To-night, Captain Spicer's oblique vision shone with unusual triumph, and there was a glow on his bloodless cheek: he had in tow a stout young gentleman from the city of Norwich, whose late father had been reputed as of fabulous wealth. They had each under their belts perhaps more burgundy than could be carried with grace.

"Ah, my lord! " cried Stafford, "the evening to you!" His eye was roving round the room as he spoke. "I vow, Miss Pommeroy, your blue eyes are more prodigious large than ever!"

"They need be," retorted the girl with her impudent ogle, "to take in so many fine bucks together." Her rolling orbs lingered on Mortemar—but he was adamant. Then she shot a sidelong leer towards his lordship, to see if he were any way stirred. But still his lordship sat yawning, the image of weariness.

"Will Mr. Stafford have a pinch?" quoth Mortemar, with his best leg and his superlative flourish. He was desperately proud of his snuff-box (which, he was fond of hinting, was a tender momento [sic] from an enamoured lady of quality). With the tail of his eye on Mandeville, he began to work up to the anecdote: "Do I see you notice this little trinket? … A curious history, sir"

"Gad, Mr. Mortemar! is that you? No snuff, I thank you, sir. 'Tis a fad of mine, but, to my thinking, there's but one fashion of enjoying rapee."

"And what is that?" eagerly asked the young gentleman from Norwich. Stafford wheeled and measured the recruit with a haughty eye.

"From a little white wrist, my good fellow," he answered at length; "or, better still, if fortune offers, from a dimpled shoulder. He who has thus tasted his pinch" he broke off. "Put a pinch on my wrist," Miss Pommeroy was crying with a giggle; and, her eyes on Stafford, thrust forth that plump member.

"Do, Mr. Mortemar," said Stafford, "and Captain Spicer's new friend can practise. But recommend him to shut his mouth."

Then he turned airily to Mrs. Macnamara.

"My dear madam," said he, "I vow I have been thrilled! Zenobia … Zenobia is a magnificent performance. Zenobia, with her bevy of maidens" He swept a smiling glance along the self-conscious row: black eyes, grey eyes, sly eyes, innocent eyes, gave him back his handsome look with interest. And yet his gaze wandered like that of one seeking. "’Twas a sight to make an old man young, and"

"And a young gentleman?" put in Mrs. Macnamara, with a jolly, fat laugh. On the boards she outdid Mrs. Siddons; but behind the scenes she was plain Bridget Macnamara, with a good-natured heart, an easy morality, and a zest for meals.

"A young gentleman, if you mean me, ma'am," said Tom Stafford, "wished he had twenty hearts … and as many purses."

"Oh, fie, sir! who talks of purses?"

"Merely as a means of expressing the feeling of a true heart, ma'am," said Stafford, with his most engaging smile. "But, by the way, do I not miss one of the bewitching mountain maidens?"

"Oh, Mr. Stafford, sir!" she menaced with her massive finger.

"The creature with the voice, Mrs. Macnamara."

"The creature with the voice? Why, he means my new pupil, girls!" said Mrs. Macnamara, delighted. The days were long gone by when the light in a young man's eye could hold any personal meaning for her; but she had not lost her sympathy with love.

A shrug and a look of scorn now passed among the listening damsels, as you may see the wind ruffle the cornfields: this butterfly gentleman in silver brocade had but a poor taste, after all! But Mrs. Macnamara had caught Miss de Vyne by the arm and whispered in her ear:

"The child has never had one bit of fun since she came to us. Go tell her that I want her. Mind, my dear, I want her. Bid her here instantly." She nodded and smiled as the messenger whisked away.

"You'd never believe it, sir, that girl (oh! you've got an eye, Mr. Stafford, you've noticed her!)—now mark my words, that girl will be the greatest actress on the stage one of these fine days, or my name is not Bridget Macnamara."

"Why, the thing's a Quaker!" cried the pertest of maidens, interrupting her conversation with the young gentleman from Norwich, to throw the denunciation over her shoulder.

"A Quaker!" echoed Stafford, and was more interested than ever. "Who's a Quaker?" hiccoughed the young gentleman from Norwich. "Quakers … ecod! we grow 'em fine at Norwich!"

"Do Quakers ever kiss?" inquired Lord Mandeville, raising his lazy voice.

"Yes—on the sly," said Peggy tartly.

"Neither in public nor on the sly, Miss Pommeroy," put in the matron with some severity (Peggy was not of her favourites), "has my pupil ever known any such familiarities— poor child!" concluded the lady, half to herself, with a sudden relapse from dignity.

"Pasitively, quite a phenamenan!" lisped Captain Spicer.

"I declare," cried a gentleman in plum-colour, "a shocking state of affairs! Where is the young lady, that this omission may instantly be rectified?" And he laughed in delight at his own wit.

"It would take a better man than you, Sir Thomas, I'm thinking," laughed Mrs. Macnamara.

"By gum! is it a wager?" cried Captain Spicer's recruit. This youth was beginning to have vague glimmers of a fast gentleman's duties in Town. "Ecod! if it's for kissing a Quaker, I'm on for it.… We know how to deal with 'em, at Norwich!"

He winked offensively; then, of a sudden, kissed the nearest maiden with a smack, and was instantly paid back by a swinging box on the ear.

"Mr. Staffard, sir," cried Captain Spicer, "are you for a wager?" (When was Tom Stafford not for a wager, even with so uncongenial a taker as Captain Spicer? He would almost as soon have refused a duel!) "And you, my lard?"

"If anyone is wagering, I'll wager," said his lordship. "Perhaps someone will kindly tell me what it is about."

"'Tis who shall kiss the Quaker," said Captain Spicer waggishly.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" clucked Mrs. Macnamara in some fluster.

"Nay," said Mr. Stafford; "the bet, as I take it, is won by him whom the lady herself shall choose for favour."

"Why, certainly," said Spicer, with one severe orb on his pupil. "I trust we're all gentlemen here. Shall each stake ten guineas?"

"I'll have no tricks played with my young ladies," said "Zenobia."

"Tricks!" exclaimed Stafford. "My dearest madam, it shall be a fair field and no favour—the gentle Beauty shall choose as freely as young Paris himself … amongst us divinities, ha!" His ironical eye swept from the insignificance of Sir Thomas to Lord Mandeville's pallid, indolent mask; from Spicer's green visage to the red vacuity of the young gentleman from Norwich. And he had an agreeable consciousness of the charming figure cut by one Tom Stafford among these assorted rivals. "If kissing goes by favour" thought he, and smiled.

"Well, well," said the placable matron; "indeed, I'm never one to spoil sport, and a kiss never hurt anybody, to my thinking. But hush, hush!" she warned, finger on lip.

A tall, slender girl came quickly in, her draperies fluttering. She had evidently been interrupted in her disrobing, for her soft, brown hair had been almost brushed clear of powder and was coiled in a careless knot at the back of her head. The paint had been washed from her cheek. A very wind-flower she looked, white and fragile, and yet with a certain woodland strength of her own, amid these high-coloured stage roses. She seemed very tall, in the long lines of her plain stuff dress; and her throat merged like a flower-stem from the violet folds of the mantle she had thrown across her shoulders.

Lord Mandeville prodded Miss Pommeroy and then pointed with his large white forefinger.

"Who is that?" he said suddenly.

"That!" echoed Miss Peggy, with huge scorn. "That!" she cried with her coarse giggle. "Why, that's the Quaker your lordship has wagered to kiss!"

The new-comer looked neither to the right nor to the left—she went straight to Mrs. Macnamara.

"You sent for me, madam," said she.

Mr. Stafford had been right; hers was a voice indeed! Low-pitched and tender-noted, it seemed to murmur to the heart, and yet reached in distinctness to the further recesses of the room. Such a voice alone, in an actress, is genius.

"By gum!" suddenly shouted the young gentleman from Norwich. He was never overcome by shyness, and now, with a stiff lining of burgundy, felt himself a match for any fine fellow of the company. He elbowed his way between a beau in puce and the indignant Miss de Vyne. "By gum!" he cried, and slapped his thigh, "if it's not Rachel Peace!"

"Rachel Peace," said Lord Mandeville to himself, as if the sound liked him.

"Captain Spicer," cried Stafford, with sharpness, "keep your cub in order, I pray you!"

The blood had rushed in a lovely tide to the brow of Rachel Peace; but she kept her eyes steadily on Mrs. Macnamara's face and stood wrapped in a gentle dignity more closely still than in the folds of her violet cloak.

There was something of a scuffle between Captain Spicer and his young friend, which resulted in the latter's momentary silence. But his mouth was already open for the passage of his next explosive contribution to the dialogue, when:

"Rachel, my dear," said the good-natured Mrs. Bridget, "I'll not have you hiding away in this fashion when there's laughter and compliments and all the things young people like waiting for you. Here is a friend of mine wants to be introduced"

"If anything could make me prouder," interrupted Stafford in his pleasant, high-bred tones, "than the title of friend, which Mrs. Macnamara so obligingly bestows upon me, it would be, madam "—he bowed deep before the girl—"to have the honour of knowing one whose voice, too seldom lifted to-night, has moved this heart in such unwonted fashion."

He laid his hand upon his fine brocaded waistcoat. The girl's glance deepened and kindled as she listened to him. Her sensitive face quivered. She looked from him to her protectress, and seemed to hesitate between a guileless pleasure and a timid distrust. Lord Mandeville suddenly rose from his seat beside the now sulky Peg, and stood gazing at Miss Peace as upon some thing unknown, undreamed of, his heavy-lidded eyes wide open at last.

"Hark to him!" Mrs. Macnamara laughed, pointing at Stafford. "He'd talk the birds off the trees!"

"Ah!" cried that gentleman, "if I could but talk this lady and yourself to my poor table to-night!"

"Table!" quoth she, a glitter in her eye.

" A trifle of supper, with my unworthy self as host?"

"Well," responded Mrs. Bridget comfortably, "I'm not the one to say 'Nay.' Supper is always a good thing. We'll come, eh, Rachel?"

All the light had fled from the girl's face. She shrank back, "Indeed, sir.… I beg you, madam, let me retire. I cannot sup with this gentleman."

"Hoity-toity!" cried Madam, as the vision of capon and Sillery faded from her mental gaze. "'Tis a vast pity, my dear, that you will still wear these airs! Oh, forget that you were once a Friend, Rachel Peace, and for Heaven's sake be friendly!"

Once more the girl shifted her eyes from Mrs. Macnamara to Mr. Stafford, and then back again. Something, perhaps, in the suppressed eagerness of the gentleman's watchful look; something, it might be, of self-betrayal in the dame's greedy lips and her meaning glances seemed to strike her with horror. She stepped back as if a precipice opened at her feet.

"Indeed," she said quickly, "I must go home."

Her eyes were like a frightened child's. Lord Mandeville caught sight of them, and suddenly there was a throbbing within his breast. Now, this was strange, for it was as well known to himself as to everyone else that he possessed no heart.

Rachel turned, wrapping her mantle about her. Blindly she was seeking an escape, when, at a whisper from Captain Spicer, the young gentleman from Norwich sprang forward playfully to bar her way.

"Dost thee not remember me, friend?" cried he, and thrust his grinning face close to hers.

She looked from him in disgust, and her eye then fell on Sir Thomas, who, at the other side of her, had advanced with skip and jump and a series of inane bows. He had but a vapid mind, this little baronet, a poor taste in garments and a feeble command of attitude; nevertheless, he had been born a gentleman—with another bow, he fell away forthwith.

But an undaunted spark was he of Norwich.

"Ecod!" he pursued in light and elegant tones of banter, "is there so much hurry, my dear? By gum! but old Master Peace made a fine to do after you at Norwich! What will thee give me," he cried, charmed with his humour, "not to betray the secret?"

Rachel's face was white; but with a sudden gathering of strength and dignity, she turned upon him in grave composure.

"I am sorry," she said—and her wonderful voice vibrated through the room—"but I have no speech to hold with thee, friend. There is no secret for thee to keep, and therefore naught thou canst do for me. Nor is there aught I can offer thee."

Her answer in that same Quaker phraseology with which she had been thus insolently baited, her delicate, serious air, held strange rebuke for one who could feel it. Mr. Stafford lifted the single eyeglass that hung from a ribbon round his neck, to look at her with ever-deepening interest. Lord Mandeville came a pace nearer. The young gentleman from Norwich thought the little silence that had fallen on the room could betoken nothing but a flattering attention centred on his next move. He caught Rachel by the elbow.

"What," he cried, "naught? Naught for me? Shall I not have the Kiss of Peace?" He paused to look round for admiration.

"Captain Spicer," exclaimed Mr. Stafford, with an air of nausea, "that animal of yours is not fit to be let loose!"

Rachel stood like a statue. Peg Pommeroy had clapped her hands with a loud laugh, echoed by some of the other girls from the different corners whither, with their admirers, they had retreated. Stimulated by the sound of this applause, Captain Spicer's pupil lurched forward towards the Quaker's disdainful face.

"Unhand her, sir!" deeply ordered Mrs. Macnamara.

Lord Mandeville had taken two long steps. Without a word he extended his arm. His great white hand closed upon the nape of the youth's neck; it was a fine grip. The youth's wig yawned over his cropped head. "Ow!" he cried, and this was all he had breath to cry; he was swung violently backwards, shaken like a rat in the jaws of a terrier, and then released with a twist that sent him plunging into Captain Spicer's lean waistcoat.

The gentlemen of the Little Theatre were prodigiously impressed by my lord's neatness of action. The ladies screeched or tittered, according to their disposition. Lord Mandeville and Rachel Peace looked upon each other's face and minded no other in the room.

"Madam," he said, bowing before her with a profounder respect than he had ever shown a duchess, "you wish to retire: my coach is at the door" Her grave and searching eye darkened with a deep reproach. "Madam," he went on earnestly, as he read her thought, "I shall be honoured if you condescend to make use of it, of my horses and servants. I purpose to return on foot."

Mr. Stafford stood watching with that smile of his that was at once so genial and so cynical. He saw her, after this single hesitation, lay her slender hand in acquiescence upon Lord Mandeville's wrist. "Heaven help the girl!" thought he. "She's fled from the arms of the bear cub into the lion's jaw. Gad! I've never seen Mandeville so taken. 'Tis a pale child, when all's said and done … but, stab me, how she moves!" His experienced eye kindled as he marked the inimitable grace with which this unknown actress paused to curtsy before Mrs. Macnamara and then passed on, still led by Lord Mandeville, towards the door.

Here, however, they were arrested by a roar—the young gentleman from Norwich had recovered from his sudden giddiness and found his breath once more.

"Ecod!" he was crying, "I will have blood for this!"

His stout, red face looked so exceeding comic without the shade of his wig that Stafford was seized with laughter. But Captain Spicer, whose usually astute intellect had been to-night somewhat troubled by the fumes of the bottle, now grasped the situation with a return of sobered wits. A quarrel with Lord Mandeville! His fool of a recruit could come but poorly out of any such pass, and the gallant Captain's deeply interested exchequer could allow of no such risk.

"Blad?" he echoed shrilly. "No, sir, no blad here, but marrowbones!" He caught the youth sharply by the shoulder. "Are you mad?" he hissed in his ear. "Don't you know who 'tis you're talking to? 'Tis the famous Lord Mandeville, you booby! You must apalagise."

"Apologise!" cried the unhappy young gentleman. "I? Apologise?"

"He's had too mach wine, my lard. Why, what a sight the fallow is! Where's your wig, sir? You are making a laughing-stack of yourself—and of me!"

Here the irate Captain plucked the wig from one of the actors, who was convulsing Miss Peggy by some merry antic with the same. He clapped it fiercely on his pupil's poll, with so much disregard to symmetry, however, that the queue came to the front and effectively choked further protest.

Rachel's lips broke into a delicious smile. Mandeville, who could not move his eyes from her face, even for one contemptuous glance towards his victim—although he had halted to hear what this latter might have to say in the way of further challenge—proceeded again unmoved towards the door. He had once more ceremoniously taken the Quaker's hand. As the panels closed upon them, Stafford fell likewise into sudden gravity upon the memory of Rachel's smile. "By Heaven," he said to himself, "Mandeville is a connoisseur—the creature is exquisite!"

"So, gentlemen," said he aloud, cheerfully, as he turned once more to the company, "we have lost the wager."

"You, at least, made but a poor race for it, Mr. Stafford," said hungry Mrs. Macnamara in dudgeon. Then: "And you, girls," she cried with asperity, "shame on you to be loitering like this! Some of you will be called in a minute. Miss Pommeroy, you're for the curtain, if you please."

Captain Spicer and his recruit from Norwich were wrangling in a corner. And presently the young gentleman was observed to shed tears: Spicer had actually threatened to abandon him!

"What would become of you if I did not keep my eyes on you?" rated the Captain.

"Captain Spicer's eyes are more useful than most people's," said Stafford soothingly; "he can see both sides of things at once. And 'tis a prodigious advantage, sir."

The slope of the Haymarket was being scoured by the rain of a September tempest. The gutters were rushing streams, the black roofs dripping. Foul old London was pure for an hour, the moist air vivifying. Rachel, on Lord Mandeville's arm, halted involuntarily under the porch.

"Oh," she cried, "how fresh, how clean, after that scent, that heat of the green-room! … Oh! " she added, breathing deep, "if it were not for my art!" The exclamation seemed to have escaped her. Quickly she recollected herself and turned to him. "Nay," she said now, "it is raining still. I pray you call me a sedan and keep your coach, sir."

And, for the first time that evening, Lord Mandeville in his turn smiled.

"A little rain will not hurt me," he said gently. "Nay, nay, 'tis I pray you. My running footman shall escort you—you shall tell him yourself where you wish to be driven. I do prefer to walk."

If she had a lingering doubt of him, it then vanished. She stepped into his coach, the Quaker girl, as the Queen into her state-carriage. And it pleased him to bend before her as before majesty itself. But he paused at the coach window, looking in upon her lingeringly, and could not bring himself to give the signal for driving on. The light from the footman's link and the lamps of the portal fell full upon her face. He thought his eyes had never beheld anything so fair.

"How come you," he said after a while, "how come you, Rachel Peace, on the boards of a playhouse?"

The soft eyes, fixed upon his, shone as through a mist of tears they would not shed. Her lips quivered. He tightened his hand upon the ledge of the coach window to keep back the mad impulse of seizing her to his breast

"Oh! I have done wrong, I know," she said. "I fear I have broken my father's heart. But I cannot go back—I cannot!"

A sudden passion shook her; she wrung her slender hands. "Sir," she cried, "I have no mother. … I cannot think that God meant that we should live such lives—God who made all the things beautiful, who gave us eyes to see, lips for laughter. Oh! you in the world, who see in the odd ways of Quakers nothing but food for jest … could you but know the long tragedy of a Quaker home to the young soul, I believe it might rather draw your tears!"

Lord Mandeville, though he had a sense of humour of his own, found nothing comic that he, of all men, should be selected for this confidence. And truly there must have been, even in his silence, some strange quality of sympathy; for, after a pause, the girl, with the thrill of unshed tears in her golden voice, went on:

"But I could have borne it. My father is a just man; and, though mere justice is cold comfort, I could have born to bide with him, had he been content that I should do so."

She shuddered and fell silent.

"He wanted to wed you against your will," said Mandeville, by some quick intuition of an indignant mind leaping at her story.

"Oh!" she answered quickly, "it was to a worthy man—a Friend of great standing among us, of many virtues. My father meant well, doubtless. But I—it would have been a crime! Sir, I was forced to break the Commandment and disobey my father, for I carry in my heart another Commandment, and it I could not violate."

The passion had come back upon her. Her velvet eye flashed, and the gathering tears suddenly fell and rolled down her cheeks. Mandeville leaned in and whispered:

"You could not wed where you did not love?"

"Verily, I would rather die."

"And verily it is well said," he answered. And there was no mockery, but a deep earnestness, in his echo of her asseveration. "And so," he added, after a pause, "poor Quaker dove, your white wings have taken you among all these painted birds, these jays and peacocks—these Pommeroys, these De Vynes and Mortemars!" Once again there came a silence between them. Then, glancing down, he said suddenly and with a change of tone: "'Twas the easier, flight, perhaps; and doubtless"

"Nay, nay," she interposed; "do not so mistake me. I would hold it shame, now, having taken my life into my own hands, did I not employ it, for I believe Heaven meant me so to do. Sir, I know I have my talent, and I will not bury it; now that I am free, I would use it. Mrs. Macnamara has been kind to me … in her way … I knew her daughter at home. I am already earning a small salary, and she" Rachel hesitated a moment, and an arch smile crept on her lip—"she instructs me."

"She!" said Mandeville, with his short, loud laugh. Once more he gazed deeply on the girl in his coach; but this time it was with a new point in view. Every inflection of her voice, from passion to pathos, from earnestness to delicate mirth, lingered in his ear like to the strains of music. He remembered her rare gesture, the grace of her every movement. Beneath his gaze, even now as she sat silent, watching him, the shadows of her thoughts were passing upon her countenance as the clouds over a clear lake. Ranting, strutting old Macnamara teach her! "'Tis you," he cried suddenly, "shall teach the world!"

As he spoke, he meant a lordly promise. The Earl of Mandeville had powerful interest in most worlds.… But she caught his words only as an encouragement to the artist; and such a beautiful gratitude leaped to her face that he bit his tongue over the coarse proffer of patronage which would have spoilt all.

"Oh, sir! if you think something of my gifts, then shall I hope. But, indeed, I had but a poor part to-night."

She had had a part—and he had not seen her! He had sat by Miss Peggy Pommeroy, all that precious time, wondering that life could hold so much tedium. Had there ever been such waste of an evening?

As he leaned into the coach, the rain pattered on his back, hissed into the torches of the linkmen, striped in long slants and snake-lines the farther windows of the coach. From gutter and cobble-stone, roof and pavement, rang out the song of the rain. Ever and anon would come a flying gust, and all the lights of torch and lantern would bend, burn blue, and madly dance. Lord Mandeville's horses stamped and shivered and shook the harness. But his Lordship himself had no thought but to marvel on the snowdrop beauty of the face of Rachel Peace when the lights and shadows played on it. All at once his silence and his brooding eye seemed to frighten her; she drew back with a look that woke him, too, from his dream. He instantly moved from the window.

"You would go home," he said formally. "Madam, I wish you good night."

At this, in her woman's way, her heart seemed to smite her that, by unworthy apprehension, she had wronged one so generously courteous.

"Nay," said she, eagerly arresting him, "one word more. Friend, may I not know by what name to remember thee?" Then she blushed and begged him excuse her for that, in spite of all her self-schooling, the old language still came easiest to her tongue.

He broke in abruptly, vowing it was the sweetest he had ever heard; then interrupted himself, afraid of his own vehemence. Here was a flower that scarce could withstand a touch; he caught back at his highest air of ceremony.

"Madam, I have to crave your pardon. I am remiss indeed not to have introduced myself. My name is Mandeville." He drew himself up and bowed; then, looking at her, saw, half piqued and half amused, that the name of which England thought so much had no meaning in her ear. "I am," he went on, with a sort of awkwardness, yet proudly, too, "Lionel Hill-Dare, Earl of Mandeville." And he added with emphasis: "At your service."

"My lord, I did not need the sound of your name nor the sight of the coronet on your coach to tell me that you are great and noble. Amongst us Friends, the outward show is little, but the deeds of the generous heart are much.… Good night, my lord."

Her white fingers now clasped the window-frame where his own had rested. He extended his hand.

"Will you then not say: 'Good night … friend'?"

At this she smiled, that smile of exquisite archness that had already bereft him of his senses.

"Good night, friend, and thank thee!" said she, and laid her slim, cool hand in his. He stooped and kissed it.

As he stood, his back against the grimy pillars of the theatre-porch, and watched his coach clattering up the Haymarket, the red torch leaping as the footman ran beside it, all through the downpour, his whole being was aglow. Lord Mandeville the roué had found something in himself he had not known he possessed; and, as his coach rounded the corner and was lost to his sight, this thing that he had discovered, behold! 'twas gone from him. She was carrying it away with her. He had given it—nay, had flung it into her pretty hands, this hitherto unknown possession of Lord Mandeville—his heart.

When Mr. Stafford emerged from the theatre, he positively, started to see the motionless figure leaning against the pillar. For once, his knowledge of the world was at fault; for once, events had prepared for him a genuine surprise. A sharp exclamation escaped him. Lord Mandeville turned his dreaming eyes, saw the amazed countenance, and read the thought behind it.

"Sir," said he, and took his hat from his head with a certain grandeur of gesture that he could assume at times, "I beg to inform you—and kindly yourself pass the news to your companions—that I have not won the wager."

He turned, replaced his hat, and pensively walked away in the rain.