ld her. She rarely went abroad, and at the
small white house in Palace Street she was denied to visitors. True, 'twas
the way to keep upon curiosity the keenest edge, to pique interest and
send the town to the playhouse as the one point of view from which the
riddle might be studied. But wisdom such as this could scarce be expected
of the girl. Given, then, that 'twas not her vanity which kept her
Darden's Audrey, what was it? Was not Mr. Haward of Fair View rich,
handsome, a very fine gentleman? Generous, too, for had he not sworn, as
earnestly as though he expected to be believed, that the girl was pure
innocence? His hand was ready to his sword, nor were men anxious to incur
his cold enmity, so that the assertion passed without open challenge. He
was mad for her,--that was plain enough. And she,--well she's woman and
Darden's Audrey, and so doubly an enigma. In the mean time, to-night she
plays Monimia, and her madness makes you weep, so sad it is, so hopeless,
and so piercing sweet.

In this new world that was so strange to her Darden's Audrey bore herself
as best she might. While it was day she kept within the house, where the
room that in September she had shared with Mistress Deborah was now for
her alone. Hour after hour she sat there, book in hand, learning how those
other women, those women of the past, had loved, had suffered, had fallen
to dusty death. Other hours she spent with Mr. Charles Stagg in the long
room downstairs, or, when Mistress Stagg had customers, in the theatre
itself. As in the branded schoolmaster chance had given her a teacher
skilled in imparting knowledge, so in this small and pompous man, who
beneath a garb of fustian hugged to himself a genuine reverence and
understanding of his art, she found an instructor more able, perhaps, than
had been a greater actor. In the chill and empty playhouse, upon the
narrow stage where, sitting in the September sunshine, she had asked of
Haward her last favor, she now learned to speak for those sisters of her
spirit, those dead women who through rapture, agony, and madness had sunk
to their long rest, had given their hands to death and lain down in a
common inn. To Audrey they were real; she was free of their company. The
shadows were the people who lived and were happy; who night after night
came to watch a soul caught in the toils, to thunder applause when death
with rude and hasty hands broke the net, set free the prisoner.

The girl dreamed as she