"You really think so, my dear? How very odd!" remarks papa.

Little Het looks up from her dismal corner with a faint smile of humour.
Theo's secret is a secret for nobody in the house, it seems. Can any
young people guess what it is? Our young lady continues to read:

"'Spencer has asked the famous Mr. Johnson to breakfast to-morrow,
who condescends to hear the play, and who won't, I hope, be too angry
because my heroine undergoes the fate of his in Irene. I have heard he
came up to London himself as a young man with only his tragedy in his
wallet. Shall I ever be able to get mine played? Can you fancy the
catcall music beginning, and the pit hissing at that perilous part of
the fourth act, where my executioner comes out from the closet with his
great sword, at the awful moment when he is called upon to amputate?
They say Mr. Fielding, when the pit hissed at a part of one of his
pieces, about which Mr. Garrick had warned him, said, 'Hang them, they
have found it out, have they?' and finished his punch in tranquillity.
I suppose his wife was not in the boxes. There are some women to whom I
would be very unwilling to give pain, and there are some to whom I would
give the best I have.'"

"Whom can he mean? The letter is to you, my dear. I protest he is making
love to your mother before my face!" cries papa to Hetty, who only gives
a little sigh, puts her hand in her father's hand, and then withdraws
it.

"'To whom I would give the best I have. To-day it is only a bunch of
lilacs. To-morrow it may be what?--a branch of rue--a sprig of bays,
perhaps--anything, so it be my best and my all.

"'I have had a fine long day, and all to myself. What do you think of
Harry playing truant?'" (Here we may imagine, what they call in France,
or what they used to call, when men dared to speak or citizens to hear,
sensation dans l'auditoire.)

"'I suppose Carpezan wearied the poor fellow's existence out. Certain it
is he has been miserable for weeks past; and a change of air and scene
may do him good. This morning, quite early, he came to my room, and told
me he had taken a seat in the Portsmouth machine, and proposed to go to
the Isle of Wight, to the army there.'"

The army! Hetty looks very pale at this announcement, and her mother
continues:

"'And a little portion of it, namely, the thirty-second regiment, is
commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Richmond Webb--the nephew of the famous
old General under whom my grandfather Esmond