the theatre to-night--a man and a woman in the stalls behind
us. They talked all the louder when the lights went down. They wondered
'why the Lavigne did not star on the programme as a Viscountess?' but, of
course, they said, 'the Foltlebarres would never stand that! They were
nearly wild when that handsome scamp of theirs married her--poor Beauty
Beauvayse, of the Grey Hussars.' He and she had kept house together; there
was a kiddie coming; they said the little woman played her cards
uncommonly well!... The marriage was pulled off on the quiet at a
Registrar's a week or so before Beau got his appointment on the Staff.
Straight of the fellow, but afterwards, at Gueldersdorp, didn't he kick
over the matrimonial pole? Somebody had seen his engagement to a Miss
Something-or-other announced in a Siege newspaper, published the very day
he got killed.... Poor beggar! Rough on him, and rough on the
Foltlebarres, and a facer for Lessie ... and what price the girl?' And I
was the girl!... It was of me they were talking!..."

Her lips writhed back from her white teeth. She winced and shuddered. "Oh!
can't you see me sitting and listening, and every word vitriol, burning to
the bone?"

"Why did you remain," said Saxham, wrung by pity, "to be tortured by such
prurient prattlers? Why did you not get up and leave the place?"

"I could not move," she said.... "I could only sit and listen. Then the
First Act ended, and the lights went up, and Lady Hannah touched my arm. I
knew when our eyes met that she had heard as I had. She got up, saying, 'I
think we have had enough of this?' and then we came away."

She caught her breath and bit her underlip, and he saw her eyes grow
misty.

"She sent a Commissionaire to call a hansom.... She took my hand as we
stood waiting in the empty vestibule. She said: 'Those chattering pies
behind us have saved me some bad half-hours! Your husband, for some reason
of his own, has never told you. And it has more than once occurred to me
that if I were the true friend I want to be to both of you, I'd have
proved it before now by telling you myself. But I've learned to be
doubtful of my own inspirations!...' I asked her then if all they had said
was true? She shrugged her shoulders and nodded: '_Pour tout dire_, they
let Beau down rather gently.... But if he never could tell the truth to a
woman, he never went back on a man; and, after all, these things run in
the blood. _Passons l'eponge la-dessus._ Forg