began to wish that the American
would appear, but Miss Schley had nothing to do in the first act till
near the end, and then had only one short scene to bring down the
curtain. Lady Holme knew this because she had seen the play in Paris.
She thought the American version very dull. The impropriety had been
removed and with it all the fun. People began to yawn and to assume
the peculiar blank expression--the bankrupt face--that is indicative of
thwarted anticipation. Only the Americans who had seen the piece in New
York preserved their lively looks and an appearance of being on the _qui
vive_.

Lord Holme's blunt brown features gradually drooped, seemed to become
definitely elongated. As time went on he really began to look almost
lantern-jawed. He bent forward and tried to catch Mr. Laycock's eye and
to telegraph an urgent question, but only succeeded in meeting the surly
blue eyes of Leo Ulford, whom he met to-night for the first time. In
his despair he turned towards Mrs. Leo, and at once encountered the
ear-trumpet. He glanced at it with apprehension, and, after a moment of
vital hesitation, was about to pour into it the provender, "Have you
any notion when she's comin' on?" when there was a sudden rather languid
slapping of applause, and he jerked round hastily to find Miss Schley
already on the stage and welcomed without any of the assistance which he
was specially there to give. He lifted belated hands, but met a glance
from his wife which made him drop them silently. There was a satire in
her eyes, a sort of humorous, half-urging patronage that pierced the
hide of his self-satisfied and lethargic mind. She seemed sitting there
ready to beat time to his applause, nod her head to it as to a childish
strain of jigging music. And this apparent preparation for a semi-comic,
semi-pitiful benediction sent his hands suddenly to his knees.

He stared at the stage. Miss Schley was looking wonderfully like Viola,
he thought, on the instant, more like than she did in real life; like
Viola gone to the bad, though become a very reticent, yet very definite,
_cocotte_. There was not much in the scene, but Miss Schley, without
apparent effort and with a profound demureness, turned the dulness of
it into something that was--not French, certainly not that--but that was
quite as outrageous as the French had been, though in a different way;
something without definite nationality, but instinct with the slyness
of acute and unscrupulou