during which Nick brushed at a panel.
It ended in his presently saying: "There's one thing certainly Peter
_would_ like--that is simply to be here to-night. It's a great
night--another great night--for the abandoned one. She's to act Juliet
for the first time."

"Ah how I should like to see her!" the girl cried.

Nick glanced at her; she sat watching him. "She has sent me a stall; I
wish she had sent me two. I should have been delighted to take you."

"Don't you think you could get another?" Biddy quavered.

"They must be in tremendous demand. But who knows after all?" Nick
added, at the same moment looking round. "Here's a chance--here's quite
an extraordinary chance!"

His servant had opened the door and was ushering in a lady whose
identity was indeed justly reflected in those words. "Miss Rooth!" the
man announced; but he was caught up by a gentleman who came next and who
exclaimed, laughing and with a gesture gracefully corrective: "No,
no--no longer Miss Rooth!"

Miriam entered the place with her charming familiar grandeur--entered
very much as she might have appeared, as she appeared every night, early
in her first act, at the back of the stage, by the immemorial middle
door. She might exactly now have been presenting herself to the house,
taking easy possession, repeating old movements, looking from one to the
other of the actors before the footlights. The rich "Good-morning" she
threw into the air, holding out her right hand to Biddy and then giving
her left to Nick--as she might have given it to her own brother--had
nothing to tell of intervals or alienations. She struck Biddy as still
more terrible in her splendid practice than when she had seen her
before--the practice and the splendour had now something almost royal.
The girl had had occasion to make her curtsey to majesties and
highnesses, but the flutter those effigies produced was nothing to the
way in which at the approach of this young lady the agitated air seemed
to recognise something supreme. So the deep mild eyes she bent on Biddy
were not soothing, though for that matter evidently intended to soothe.
Biddy wondered Nick could have got so used to her--he joked at her as
she loomed--and later in the day, still under the great impression of
this incident, she even wondered that Peter could have full an impunity.
It was true that Peter apparently didn't quite feel one.

"You never came--you never came," Miriam said to her kindly and sadly;
an