terrific violence. Roof,
rafters, tiles, brickwork, shot into the air and fell in every
direction. Sally with many others was sent prostrate by the shock, but
was uninjured. When she was able to rise and look over the parapet no
one was on the abutment. Jeremy Rofflash had met his fate.

"The Beggar's Opera" continued on its triumphant way. Night after night
the theatre was packed. Night after night Polly was listened to with
increasing delight. She had never sung her plaintive ditties with such
pathos. No one suspected the reason. No one knew that she had given her
heart to the poor young man killed in a brawl--so the newspapers
described it--in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Polly's love for Lancelot Vane
was a secret sacred to herself. She gave her confidence to nobody--not
even to Gay. She had been happy in her love dreams, happier perhaps than
if they had become realities. Her roaming life had not brought romance
to her until she met Lancelot Vane. The sweetheartings of others had
always seemed sordid and commonplace. Had Vane been presumptuous she
would have had nothing to say to him, but she was drawn towards him
because he was drifting to his ruin and she yearned to save him. That
she should see him no more deadened her heart and numbed her brain. So
she made no effort to find out the why and wherefore of his death and
the story never reached her.

Sally Salisbury could have told her, but Sally, to her credit, be it
said, did not seek to inflict a wound for the mere satisfaction of
witnessing the agony of her rival. Vane was dead and retribution had
swiftly overtaken his assassin. What was left? Nothing. Sally had also
found romance, and some tender womanly instinct--an instinct too often
blunted by her life and temptations--sealed her lips. She had avenged
the death of the only man she ever loved with anything like purity. Let
that suffice.

The opera had an unprecedented run of sixty-two nights. Every one
marvelled. Such a thing had never happened before and when the next
season the run was continued its attractions were undimmed, save in one
particular--the original Polly Peachum was no longer to be seen or
heard. Gradually it became gossipped about that the Duke of Bolton's
suit had succeeded. The Polly over whom everybody, rich and poor, high
and low, for nearly five months had lost their heads and their hearts,
had quitted the stage for ever. Twenty-three years later the duke was
able to prove his devotion by