rembling as they held the cards; he saw the
delicate little shoulders and the poor frail neck and chest bedizened
with tawdry mock jewelry and spangles; he saw the innocent young face,
whose pure beauty no soil of stage paint could disfigure, with the smile
still on the parted lips, but with a patient forlornness in the sad
blue eyes, as if the seeing-sense that was left, mourned always for the
hearing and speaking senses that were gone--he marked all these things
in an instant, and felt that his heart was sinking as he looked. A
dimness stole over his sight; a suffocating sensation oppressed his
breathing; the lights in the circus danced and mingled together; he
bent down over the child's hand, and took it in his own; twice kissed it
fervently; then, to the utter amazement of the laughing crowd about him,
rose up suddenly, and forced his way out as if he had been flying for
his life.

There was a momentary confusion among the audience. But Mr. Jubber was
too old an adept in stage-business of all kinds not to know how to stop
the growing tumult directly, and turn it into universal applause.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried, with a deep theatrical quiver in his
voice--"I implore you to be seated, and to excuse the conduct of the
party who has just absented himself. The talent of the Mysterious
Foundling has overcome people in that way in every town of England. Do I
err in believing that a Rubbleford audience can make kind allowances for
their weaker fellow-creatures? Thanks, a thousand thanks in the name of
this darling and talented child, for your cordial, your generous, your
affectionate, your inestimable reception of her exertions to-night!"
With this peroration Mr. Jubber took his pupil out of the ring, amid the
most vehement cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs. He was
too much excited by his triumph to notice that the child, as she walked
after him, looked wistfully to the last in the direction by which
Valentine had gone out.

"The public like excitement," soliloquized Mr. Jubber, as he disappeared
behind the red curtain. "I must have all this in the bills to-morrow.
It's safe to draw at least thirty shillings extra into the house at
night."

In the meantime, Valentine, after some blundering at wrong doors, at
last found his way out of the circus, and stood alone on the cool grass,
in the cloudless autumn moonlight. He struck his stick violently on the
ground, which at that moment represented to him