the stage,--Moss who was about to enact her princely
lover--and then she walked off without another word. She went through
her part with all her usual vigour and charm, and so did he. Elmira
also was more pathetic than ever, as the night was supposed to be
something special, because a royal duke and his young bride were in
the stage box. The plaudits given would have been tremendous only
that the building was so small, and the grand quartette became such a
masterpiece that there was half a column concerning it in the musical
corner of the next morning's _Daily Telephone_. "If that girl would
only go as I'd have her," said Mr. Moss to the most confidential of
his theatrical friends, "I'd make her Mrs. Moss to-morrow, and her
fame should be blazoned all over the world before twelve months had
gone as Madame Moussa."

But Rachel, though she was enabled so to overcome her rage as to
remember only her theatrical passion when she was on the stage, spent
the whole of the subsequent night in thinking over the difficulty
into which she had brought herself by her imprudence. She understood
to the full the meaning of all those innuendoes which Mr. Moss had
provided for her; and she knew that though there was in them not a
spark of truth as regarded herself, still they were so truth-like as
to meet with acceptance, at any rate from all theatrical personages.
She had gone to M. Le Gros for the money clearly as one of the
theatrical company with which she was about to connect herself. M.
Le Gros had, to her intelligence, distinctly though very courteously
declined her request. It might be well that the company would accede
to no such request; but M. Le Gros, in his questionable civility, had
told the whole story to Lord Castlewell, who had immediately offered
her a loan of L200 out of his own pocket. It had not occurred to her
in the moment in which she had first read the words in the presence
of Mahomet M. M. that such must necessarily be the case. Was it
probable that Lord Castlewell should on his own behalf recover from
the treasury of the theatre the sum of L200? And then the nature of
this lord's character opened itself to her eyes in all the forms
which Mr. Moss had intended that it should wear. A man did not lend
a young lady L200 without meaning to secure for himself some reward.
And as she thought of it all she remembered the kind of language
in which she had spoken of her father. She had described him as an
American in wor