bullying voice; I don't know what more you want in a German prince. It is this everlasting hypercriticism which spoils all one's pleasure and frightens all the character out of the artists!'

At which Mrs. Stuart laughed, and, woman-like, observed that she supposed it was only people who, like Forbes, had succeeded in disarming the critics, who could afford to scoff at them,—a remark which drew a funny little bow, half-petulant, half-pleased, out of the artist, in whom one of the strongest notes of character was his susceptibility to the attentions of women.

'You've seen her already, I believe,' said Wallace to Forbes. 'I think
Miss Bretherton told me you were at the Calliope on Monday.'

'Yes, I was. Well, as I tell you, I don't care to be critical. I don't want to whittle away the few pleasures that this dull life can provide me with by this perpetual discontent with what's set before one. Why can't you eat and be thankful? To look at that girl is a liberal education; she has a fine voice too, and her beauty, her freshness, the energy of life in her, give me every sort of artistic pleasure. What a curmudgeon I should be—what a grudging, ungrateful fellow, if, after all she has done to delight me, I should abuse her because she can't speak out her tiresome speeches—which are of no account, and don't matter, to my impression at all,—as well as one of your thin, French, snake-like creatures who have nothing but their art, as you call it; nothing but what they have been carefully taught, nothing but what they have laboriously learnt with time and trouble, to depend upon!'

Having delivered himself of this tirade, the artist threw himself back in his chair, tossed back his gray hair from his glowing black eyes, and looked defiance at Kendal, who was sitting opposite.

'But, after all,' said Kendal, roused, 'these tiresome speeches are her métier; it's her business to speak them, and to speak them well. You are praising her for qualities which are not properly dramatic at all. In your studio they would be the only thing that a man need consider; on the stage they naturally come second.'

'Ah, well,' said Forbes, falling to upon his dinner again at a gentle signal from Mrs. Stuart that the carriage would soon be round, 'I knew very well how you and Wallace would take her. You and I will have to defend each other, Mrs. Stuart, against those two shower-baths, and when we go to see her afterwards I shall be invaluable, for I shall be able to save Kendal and Wallace the humbug of compliments.'

Whereupon the others protested that they would on no account be deprived of their share of the compliments, and Wallace especially laid it down that a man would be a poor creature who could not find smooth things to say upon any conceivable occasion to Isabel Bretherton. Besides, he saw her every day, and was in excellent practice. Forbes looked a little scornful, but at this point Mrs. Stuart succeeded in diverting his attention to his latest picture, and the dinner flowed on pleasantly till the coffee was handed and the carriage announced.

CHAPTER III

On their arrival at the theatre armed with Miss Bretherton's order, Mrs. Stuart's party found themselves shown into a large roomy box close to the stage—too close, indeed, for purposes of seeing well. The house was already crowded, and Kendal noticed, as he scanned the stalls and boxes through his opera-glass, that it contained a considerable sprinkling of notabilities of various kinds. It was a large new theatre, which hitherto had enjoyed but a very moderate share of popular favour, so that the brilliant and eager crowd with which it was now filled was in itself a sufficient testimony to the success of the actress who had wrought so great a transformation.

'What an experience this is for a girl of twenty-one,' whispered Kendal to Mrs. Stuart, who was comfortably settled in the farther corner of the box, her small dainty figure set off by the crimson curtains behind it. 'One would think that an actor's life must stir the very depths of a man or woman's individuality, that it must call every power into action, and strike sparks out of the dullest.'

'Yes; but how seldom it is so!'

'Well, in England, at any rate, the fact is, their training is so imperfect they daren't let themselves go. It's only when a man possesses the lower secrets of his art perfectly that he can aim at the higher. But the band is nearly through the overture. Just tell me before the curtain goes up something about the play. I have only very vague ideas about it. The scene is laid at Berlin?'

'Yes; in the Altes Schloss at Berlin. The story is based upon the legend of the White Lady.'

'What? the warning phantom of the Hohenzollerns?'

Mrs. Stuart nodded. 'A Crown-Prince of Prussia is in love with the beautiful Countess Hilda von Weissenstein. Reasons of State, however, oblige him to throw her over and to take steps towards marriage with a Princess of Würtemberg. They have just been betrothed when the Countess, mad with jealousy, plays the part of the White Lady and appears to the Princess, to try and terrify her out of the proposed marriage.'

'And the Countess is Miss Bretherton?'

'Yes. Of course the malicious people say that her get-up as the White Lady is really the raison d'etre of the piece. But hush! there is the signal. Make up your mind to be bored by the Princess; she is one of the worst sticks I ever saw!'

The first scene represented the ballroom at the Schloss, or rather the royal anteroom, beyond which the vista of the ballroom opened. The Prussian and Würtemberg royalties had not yet arrived, with the exception of the Prince Wilhelm, on whose matrimonial prospects the play was to turn. He was engaged in explaining the situation to his friend, Waldemar von Rothenfels, the difficulties in which he was placed, his passion for the Countess Hilda, the political necessities which forced him to marry a daughter of the House of Würtemberg, the pressure brought to bear upon him by his parents, and his own despair at having to break the news to the Countess.

The story is broken off by the arrival of the royalties, including the pink-and-white maiden who is to be Prince Wilhelm's fate, and the royal quadrille begins. The Prince leads his Princess to her place, when it is discovered that another lady is required to complete the figure, and an aide-de-camp is despatched into the ballroom to fetch one. He returns, ushering in the beautiful Hilda von Weissenstein.

For this moment the audience had been impatiently waiting, and when the dazzling figure in its trailing, pearl-embroidered robes appeared in the doorway of the ballroom, a storm of applause broke forth again and again, and for some minutes delayed the progress of the scene.

Nothing, indeed, could have been better calculated than this opening to display the peculiar gifts of the actress. The quadrille was a stately spectacular display, in which splendid dress and stirring music and the effects of rhythmic motion had been brought freely into play for the delight of the beholders. Between the figures there was a little skilfully-managed action, mostly in dumb show. The movements of the jealous beauty and of her faithless lover were invested throughout with sufficient dramatic meaning to keep up the thread of the play. But it was not the dramatic aspect of the scene for which the audience cared, it was simply for the display which it made possible of Isabel Bretherton's youth and grace and loveliness. They hung upon her every movement, and Kendal found himself following her with the same eagerness of eye as those about him, lest any phase of