aughter to act as well as that and you'll do the handsome
thing for her!"

"Well, she _seems_ to feel what she says," Mrs. Rooth piously risked.

"She has some stiff things to say. I mean about her past," Basil
Dashwood remarked. "The past--the dreadful past--on the stage!"

"Wait till the end, to see how she comes out. We must all be merciful!"
sighed Mrs. Rooth.

"We've seen it before; you know what happens," Miriam observed to her
mother.

"I've seen so many I get them mixed."

"Yes, they're all in queer predicaments. Poor old mother--what we show
you!" laughed the girl.

"Ah it will be what _you_ show me--something noble and wise!"

"I want to do this; it's a magnificent part," said Miriam.

"You couldn't put it on in London--they wouldn't swallow it," Basil
Dashwood declared.

"Aren't there things they do there to get over the difficulties?" the
girl inquired.

"You can't get over what _she did_!"--her companion had a rueful
grimace.

"Yes, we must pay, we must expiate!" Mrs. Rooth moaned as the curtain
rose again.

When the second act was over our friends passed out of their _baignoire_
into those corridors of tribulation where the bristling _ouvreuse_, like
a pawnbroker driving a roaring trade, mounts guard upon piles of
heterogeneous clothing, and, gaining the top of the fine staircase which
forms the state entrance and connects the statued vestibule of the
basement with the grand tier of boxes, opened an ambiguous door composed
of little mirrors and found themselves in the society of the initiated.
The janitors were courteous folk who greeted Sherringham as an
acquaintance, and he had no difficulty in marshalling his little troop
toward the foyer. They traversed a low, curving lobby, hung with
pictures and furnished with velvet-covered benches where several
unrecognised persons of both sexes looked at them without hostility, and
arrived at an opening, on the right, from which, by a short flight of
steps, there was a descent to one of the wings of the stage. Here
Miriam paused, in silent excitement, like a young warrior arrested by a
glimpse of the battle-field. Her vision was carried off through a lane
of light to the point of vantage from which the actor held the house;
but there was a hushed guard over the place and curiosity could only
glance and pass.

Then she came with her companions to a sort of parlour with a polished
floor, not large and rather vacant, where her attention flew deligh