equented by successful
persons.... Clara's eyes came back to him. Yes, she preferred her
Charles to every one else, if only--if only he would realise that she
thought of other things besides himself.

From a table near by a very good-looking man came and tapped Charles on
the shoulder.

'There's no mistaking you, old chap,' he said. 'I'm just back from
America. They think a lot of you over there since your conquest of
London.'

'You haven't met my wife,' said Charles, with his mouth full. 'What a
splendid place this is! Chicken, this is Freeland Moore. We were
together in the old days with the Old Man.'

'I was with him when he died,' said Freeland, 'died in harness.
There's no one like him now.'

'Who?' asked Clara, alive at once to even the memory of a great
personality.

'Henry Irving. He was a prince, and kept royalty alive in England. It
seems a long time ago now. Won't you come over and join us for coffee,
when you have finished? I am with Miss Julia Wainwright; she's with us
at the Imperium. Not for long, I'm afraid. It's a wash-out.'

'Ah!' said Charles, remembering Sir Henry's depressed glance round the
theatre, and he saw himself restoring splendour and success to the
Imperium.

After dinner they went over to Mr Moore's table, and Clara, shaking
hands with Miss Wainwright, warmed to the large, generous creature with
her expansive bosom, her drooping figure, her tinted face and hair and
ludicrously long soft eyes. There was room in Miss Wainwright for a
dozen Claras. She looked sentimentally and with amazement spreading in
ripples over her big face at the girl's wedding-ring and said,--

'So pleased to meet you, child. I made Freeland go over and fetch
you.... You're not on the stage, are you?'

'No,' replied Clara, 'but I'm going to be.'

'It is not what it was,' resumed Miss Wainwright, sipping her _creme de
menthe_.' The Wainwrights have always been in the profession, but I'm
sending my boy to a public-school.... You're not English, are you?'

'Oh, yes,' answered Clara, 'but I have always lived abroad in Italy and
Germany and France with my grandfather. My father and mother died in
India, but I was born in London.'

'If you want to get about,' said Miss Wainwright, 'there's nothing like
the profession. I've been in Australia, Ceylon, South Africa, America,
but never Canada.... I'm just back from America with Freeland, and we
took the first thing that came along--_Ivanhoe