at Fishguard in such weather.
Edward Henry was ready to yield up his spirit in this fearful crisis,
which endured two hours. The captain did call at Fishguard, in pouring
rain, and men came aboard selling Sunday newspapers that were full
of Isabel's arrest on the steamer, and of the nearing triumph of her
arrival in London before midnight. And newspaper correspondents also
came aboard, and all the way on the tender, and in the sheds, and
in the train, Edward Henry and Isabel Joy were subjected to the
journalistic experiments of hardy interviewers. The train arrived at
Paddington at 9 P.M. Isabel had won by three hours. The station was
a surging throng of open-mouthed curiosities. Edward Henry would not
lose sight of his priceless charge, but he sent Harrier to despatch a
telegram to Nellie, whose wifely interest in his movements he had till
then either forgotten or ignored.

And even now his mind was not free. He saw in front of him still
twenty-four hours of anguish.

VII

The next night, just before the curtain went up, he stood on the stage
of the Regent Theatre, and it is a fact that he was trembling--not
with fear but with simple excitement.

Through what a day he had passed! There had been the rehearsal in the
morning; it had gone off very well, save that Rose Euclid had behaved
impossibly, and that the Cunningham girl, the hit of the piece but
ousted from her part, had filled the place with just lamentations and
recriminations.

And then had followed the appalling scene with Rose Euclid. Rose,
leaving the theatre for lunch, had beheld workmen removing her name
from the electric sign and substituting that of Isabel Joy! She was
a woman and an artist, and it would have been the same had she been a
man and an artist. She would not submit to this inconceivable affront.
She had resigned her _role_. She had ripped her contract to bits and
flung the bits to the breeze. Upon the whole Edward Henry had been
glad. He had sent for Miss Cunningham, who was Rose's understudy,
had given her her instructions, called another rehearsal for the
afternoon, and effected a saving of nearly half Isabel Joy's fantastic
salary. Then he had entered into financial negotiations with four
evening papers and managed to buy, at a price, their contents-bills
for the day. So that all the West End was filled with men and boys
wearing like aprons posters which bore the words: "Isabel Joy to
appear at the Regent to-night." A great and