lover. Will she have to
give him up at the last?--it must be either him or Aunt Priscilla; and
she owes so much to Aunt Priscilla; while to him--oh, no! she owes him
nothing; of course he is only--only--and yet----

A bell sounds in the distance; she starts and glances at the tiny clock
upon her chimney-piece. Yes, it is almost six, and dinner will be ready
in ten minutes. And afterwards comes "The School for Scandal," and after
that the tableaux, and after that again dancing,--delights threefold for
happy eighteen. Her spirits rise; her fears fall; self-contempt,
remorse, regret, all sink into insignificance, and with a beating heart
she coils afresh her tinted hair, and twines some foreign beads about
her slender throat to make herself a shade more lovable in the eyes of
the man she must not encourage, and whose very existence she has been
forbidden to acknowledge.

* * * * *

The curtain has risen, has fallen and risen again, and now has descended
for the last time. A flutter--is it rapture or relief?--trembles through
the audience. "The School for Scandal" has come to a timely end!

I selfishly forbear from giving my readers a lengthened account of it,
as they (unless any of the Aghyohillbeg party takes up this book) have
mercy--that is, unfortunately, been debarred by fate from ever
witnessing a performance such as this, that certainly, without servile
flattery, may be termed unique. Words (that is, _my_ words) would fail
to give an adequate idea of it, and so from very modesty I hold my pen.

"It was marvellous," says Sir Mark Gore, who is paying a flying visit to
Lord Rossmoyne. He says this with the profoundest solemnity, and
perhaps a little melancholy. His expression is decidedly pensive.

"It was indeed wonderful," says the old rector, in perfect good faith.

And wonderful it was indeed. Anything so truly remarkable, I may safely
declare, was never seen in this or any other generation.

Miss Fitzgerald's Lady Teazle left nothing to be desired, save perhaps
an earlier fall of the curtain, while Captain Cobbett's Joseph Surface
was beyond praise. This is the strict truth. He was indeed the more
happy in his representation of the character in that he gave his
audience a Joseph they never had seen and never would see again on any
stage, unless Captain Cobbett could kindly be induced by them to try it
on some other occasion.

A few ignorant people, indeed, who plainly found