off with a
short, excited laugh. "It was not needed,--his mediation. But he could not
know that; no, nor none of us. True, Stagg and his wife had bragged of the
powers of this strangely found actress of theirs that they were training
to do great things, but folk took it for a trick of their trade. Oh, there
was curiosity enough, but 'twas on Haward's account.... Well, he drank to
her, standing at the head of the table at Marot's ordinary, and the glass
crashed over his shoulder, and we all went to the play."

"Yes, yes!" cried Truelove, breathing quickly, and quite forgetting how
great a vanity was under discussion.

"'Twas 'Tamerlane,' the play that this traitorous generation calls for
every 5th of November. It seems that the Governor--a Whig as rank as
Argyle--had ordered it again for this week. 'Tis a cursed piece of slander
that pictures the Prince of Orange a virtuous Emperor, his late Majesty of
France a hateful tyrant. But for Haward, whose guest I was, I had not sat
there with closed lips. I had sprung to my feet and given those
flatterers, those traducers, the lie! The thing taunted and angered until
she entered. Then I forgot."

"And she--and Audrey?"

"Arpasia was her name in the play. She entered late; her death came before
the end; there was another woman who had more to do. It all mattered not,
I have seen a great actress."

"Darden's Audrey!" said Truelove, in a whisper.

"That at the very first; not afterwards," answered MacLean. "She was
dressed, they say, as upon the night at the Palace, that first night of
Haward's fever. When she came upon the stage, there was a murmur like the
wind in the leaves. She was most beautiful,--'beauteous in hatred,' as the
Sultan in the play called her,--dark and wonderful, with angry eyes. For a
little while she must stand in silence, and in these moments men and women
stared at her, then turned and looked at Haward. But when she spoke we
forgot that she was Darden's Audrey."

MacLean laughed again. "When the play was ended,--or rather, when her part
in it was done,--the house did shake so with applause that Stagg had to
remonstrate. There's naught talked of to-day in Williamsburgh but Arpasia;
and when I came down Palace Street this morning, there was a great crowd
about the playhouse door. Stagg might sell his tickets for to-night at a
guinea apiece. 'Venice Preserved' is the play."

"And Marmaduke Haward,--what of him?" asked Truelove softly.

"He is Englis