to see the lifelong error of
his ways by a violent philippic that must have surprised the speaker hardly
less than his audience, was the most incredible thing in the play. Indeed
the author was reduced to showing us the results of the bad man's change of
heart and leaving us to imagine the processes, these being worked out in
the interval between two Acts by means of a fortnight's physical collapse,
from which he emerges unrecognisably reformed.

I cannot praise too warmly the delightfully fantastic and inconsequent
humour of the first half of the play. Often it was the things that Mr.
AINLEY was given to say; but even more often, I think, it was the
incomparable way he said them, with those astonishingly swift and
unforeseen turns of gesture and glance and movement which are his peculiar
gift. Now and then, to remind us of his versatility, he may turn to
sentiment or even tragedy, but light comedy remains his natural _metier_.

If I have a complaint to make it is that _Uncle Ned's_ studied refusal to
understand from an intimate woman-friend why it was that his elder niece,
who had been privily married, "could no longer hide her secret" (the
reticence of his friend was the sort of silly thing that you get in books
and plays, but never in life) was perhaps a little wanton and caused
needless embarrassment both to the young wife and to us. And one need not
be very squeamish to feel that it was a pity to put into the lips of a mere
child, a younger sister, the rather precocious comment that she makes on
the inconvenience of a secret marriage. The humour of the play was too good
to need assistance from this sort of titillation.

[Illustration: _Sir Robert Graham_ (_Mr. RANDLE AYRTON_). "MAKE YOURSELF AT
HOME. DON'T MIND ME."

_Edward Graham_ (_Mr. HENRY AINLEY_). "I DON'T."]

Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, as the plutocratic pachyderm, kept up his thankless end
with a fine imperviousness; and Miss IRENE ROOKE, in the part of his
secretary, played, as always, with a very gracious serenity, though I wish
this charming actress would pronounce her words with not quite so nice a
precision. Miss EDNA BEST was an admirable flapper, with just the right
note of _gaucherie_.

As _Mears_, Mr. CLAUDE RAINS was not to be hampered by the methods dear to
the detective of convention; he looked like an apache and behaved, rather
effectively, like nothing in particular.

The _Dawkins_ of Mr. G. W. ANSON knew well the first duty of a
stage-butler,