take a box on first nights? And your dancing is so exquisite! The
very poetry of motion! So pleased to have met you! Good-bye!"

And with a few more vague compliments and remarks about the weather,
Lady Winsleigh took her departure. Left alone, the actress threw herself
back in her chair and laughed.

"That woman's up to some mischief," she exclaimed sotto voce, "and so is
Lennie! I wonder what's their little game? _I_ don't care, as long as
they'll keep the high-and-mighty Errington in his place. I'm tired of
him! Why does he meddle with _my_ affairs?" Her brows knitted into a
frown. "As if he or anybody else could persuade me to go back to--," she
paused, and bit her lips angrily. Then she opened the envelope Lady
Winsleigh had left with her, and pulled out the bank-notes inside. "Let
me see--five, ten, fifteen, twenty! Not bad pay, on the whole! It'll
just cover the bill for my plush mantle. Hullo! Who's there?"

Some one knocked at her door.

"Come in!" she cried.

The feeble Tommy presented himself. His weak mouth trembled more than
ever, and he was apparently conscious of this, for he passed his hand
nervously across it two or three times.

"Well, what's up?" inquired the "star" of the Brilliant, fingering her
bank-notes as she spoke.

"Miss Vere," stammered Tommy, "I venture to ask you a favor,--could you
kindly, very kindly lend me ten shillings till to-morrow night? I am so
pressed just now--and my wife is ill in bed--and--" he stopped, and his
eyes sought her face hopefully, yet timidly.

"You shouldn't have a wife, Tommy!" averred Violet with blunt frankness.
"Wives are expensive articles. Besides, I never lend. I never
give--except to public charities where one's name gets mentioned in the
papers. I'm obliged to do that, you know, by way of advertisement. Ten
shillings! Why, I can't afford ten pence! My bills would frighten you,
Tommy! There go along, and don't cry, for goodness sake! Let your fiddle
cry for you!"

"Oh, Miss Vere," once more pleaded Tommy, "if you knew how my wife
suffers--"

The actress rose and stamped her foot impatiently.

"Bother your wife!" she cried angrily, "and you too! Look out! or I tell
the manager we've got a beggar at the Brilliant. Don't stare at me like
that! Go to the d----l with you!"

Tommy slunk off abashed and trembling, and the Vere began to sing, or
rather croak, a low comic song, while she threw over her shoulders a
rich mantle glittering with embroider