erect. Dartrey
quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried words to right
and left. He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did
not return.

Nesta felt her father's absence as light gone: his eyes rayed light.
Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him, that would win
Matilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the
spell of the hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in his
ear; and Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow. Matilda Pridden's
gaze on him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her mind.
She set herself to study a popular assembly. It could be serious to the
call of better leadership, she believed. Her father had been telling
her of late of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so her
intelligence translated his remarks) had power to rise to spiritual
ascendancy, and be once more the Islanders heading the world of a new
epoch abjuring materialism--some such idea; very quickening to her,
as it would be to this earnest young woman worshipped by Skepsey. Her
father's absence and the continued shouts of laughter, the insatiable
thirst for fun, darkened her in her desire to have the soul of the good
working sister refreshed. They had talked together; not much: enough for
each to see at either's breast the wells from the founts of life.

The box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand. She stood-up to
his look. He said to Matilda Pridden: 'Come with us; she will need you.'

'Speak it,' said Nesta.

He said to the other: 'She has courage.'

'I could trust to her,' Matilda Pridden replied.

Nesta read his eyes. 'Mother?'

His answer was in the pressure.

'Ill?'

'No longer.'

'Oh! Dartrey.' Matilda Pridden caught her fast.

'I can walk, dear,' Nesta said.

Dartrey mentioned her father.

She understood: 'I am thinking of him.'

The words of her mother: 'At peace when the night is over,' rang. Along
the gassy passages of the back of the theatre, the sound coming from an
applausive audience was as much a thunder as rage would have been. It
was as void of human meaning as a sea.

CHAPTER XLII. THE LAST

In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby
was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which
he deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between
short inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of
it as his inte