f his debut in a stage
dressing-room. And even at that stage of the narration she rather
astonished Mr. Farraday, who was shamefaced enough at the telling, by
saying with soft pity in her motherly voice:

"The poor woman. Of course she couldn't help loving you, and now she's
lost both Van and you. Now go on and tell me about Mildred."

"She--she's the best ever," was Mr. Farraday's explicit and enlightening
answer.

"Of course she is. I saw that the time you brought her to dinner with
me, and also that you were in love with her. She's really a rather
wonderful girl, and--and--Dennis, I'll tell you something that I never
expected to tell you--I've always wanted to be an actress. I simply
adore that Lindsey girl, and I know she'll make a great actress. Why on
earth should she want to marry you?" Which goes to show that
aristocratic Mrs. Farraday was not the ordinary mother.

"Let's go ask her," roared big Dennis, as he embraced her in a way that
made the sympathetic and now wealthy young Dago Italiana flash his white
teeth in joy.

And nobody can say how much the fate of "The Purple Slipper" was
affected by the fact that Rosalind went upon the stage for her first
appearance as a star, straight from the tender arms of stately,
white-haired Mrs. Farraday.

The opening night of "The Purple Slipper," by Patricia Adair, produced
by Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, and staged by Mr. William Rooney, was a
triumph undisputed and acknowledged by a brilliant cosmopolitan audience
such as Atlantic City furnishes any play presented to it before
September the twenty-fifth, for up until that week on the board-walk of
that resort East meets West and the South joins them. The eminent author
sat in the left stage box with Mrs. Justus Farraday of New York and Mr.
and Mrs. Derick Van Tyne, and at her side was a chair into which at
times dropped Mr. Dennis Farraday, but which had been reserved for the
producer. Things had gone brilliantly from the start, from the moment
the curtain went up with polished, interesting Miss Herne manoeuvering
the frightened and substituted Betty Carrington through the opening
dialogue. A veritable gasp of joy had greeted the beautiful Mr. Gerald
Height as he entered in his colonial wig, ruffles, and velvet, and his
big eyes under their bowed brows sought out the author and smiled at her
with a genuine pledge of loyalty which no lizard could ever have given
forth as he glided richly into his archaic banter with Mis