hollows above, from the depths of which his large eyes gleamed with a
glassy light. Evidently in ill health, he could hardly have kept pace
with the couple he was shadowing had they not been walking very slowly.

"Everything is in our favour," Gay was saying. "Fortune has sent you
here at the right moment. You can act and you can sing. _I_ know it, but
John Rich and the Duchess of Queensberry must know it as well. Both your
acting and singing must be put to the proof, and you must show her grace
that she hasn't wasted her money."

"That's what I'm most anxious to do, sir."

"Aye, aye. Well, to-morrow I shall bring you some of the songs you'll
have to sing in my 'Beggar's Opera'--that is if we can talk that
curmudgeon Rich into the ideas that I and my friends have in our minds.
Are you lodging in Hampstead?"

"Oh, yes. I'm staying with Hannah's cousin. You remember Hannah, don't
you, Mr. Gay? I told you what a good friend she was to me and how she
saved me from my wicked mother and the designing fellow I was so silly
as to run away with. I shall never forget my mad fancies--never!"

"Best forget them, my dear, though I fear you'll be apt to drive out one
fit of madness by taking on another. 'Tis the way love has, and----"

"Oh," interrupted Lavinia hastily, "I don't believe it. I'm not going to
bother about love any more."

"Every woman has uttered those words, and has had to eat them. How many
times have you eaten yours, my pretty Polly, since last you resolved to
forswear love?"

"Not once. I've learned my lesson. I know it now by heart."

"So it doesn't interest you now to know anything about poor Lance Vane?"

It was not the pale moonlight that made Lavinia's cheeks at that moment
look so white. Gay, who was gazing fixedly at her, saw her lips quiver.

"Poor Lance Vane? Why do you speak of him like that? Has he had his play
accepted and has it made his fortune?" she exclaimed ironically.

"Neither the one nor the other. Ill luck's dogged him. I fear he wasn't
born under a prosperous star."

"I'm sorry if he's been unfortunate. Perhaps though it was his own
fault."

A note of sadness had crept into her voice as Gay did not fail to note.

"Well, it's hard to say. To be sure, his tragedy would not have taken
the town--neither Rich nor Cibber would have aught to do with it, but he
had worse misfortunes than that. He was denounced as a traitorous
Jacobite and thrown into Newgate."

"That horrible place!