y he must have suffered to be able to portray
drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but
glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum,
though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How
should it?

Therefore when Mrs. Frayling--recollecting certain mysteries of the
toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected
guests--brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a
little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be
guilty of talking millinery in church.

For--"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet
emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpass yourself. I
never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt.
But time has flown--look."

And she pointed to the blue and gold Sevres clock upon the mantelpiece.

"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at
being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my
reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me,
Cousin Henrietta."

He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet
ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up
more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to
his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring
table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.

The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with
some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention
had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had
been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She,
therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.

"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."

The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.
He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's
warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace.
And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of
agreeable success--and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably
disqualified henceforth.

But his misfortunes worked to quite other ends than he anticipated. For
Damaris came nearer, her exp