ey
had naught to say.

The door from the stage opened, and in came Nell. There was something
sadly beautiful and pathetic in her face. She had enjoyed but now one of
the grandest triumphs known to the theatre, and yet she seemed oblivious
to the applause and bravas, to the lights and to the royalty.

A large bouquet of flowers was in her arms--a bouquet of red roses. Her
lips touched them reverently. Her eyes, however, were far away in a
dream of the past.

"From the hand of the King of England!" she mused softly to herself.
"The King? How like his face to the youthful cavalier, who weary and
worn reined in his steed a summer's day, now long ago, and took a gourd
of water from my hand. Could he have been the King? Pooh, pooh! I dream
again."

She turned away, as from herself, with a heart-heavy laugh. The manager
entered from the stage.

"See, Jack, my flowers," she said, again in an ecstasy of happiness.
"Are they not exquisite?"

"He took them from Castlemaine's hand to throw to you," snarled Hart,
jealously.

"The sweeter, then!" and Nell broke into a tantalizing laugh. "Mayhap he
was teaching the player-king to do likewise, Jack," she added,
roguishly, as she arranged the flowers in a vase.

"I am in no mood for wit-thrusts," replied Hart as he fretfully paced
the room. "You played that scene like an icicle."

"In sooth, your acting froze me," slyly retorted Nell, kindly but
pointedly. She took the sweetest roses from the bunch, kissed them and
arranged them in her bosom.

This did not improve Hart's temper.

Strings seized the opportunity to escape from his hiding-place to the
stage.

"I say, you completely ruined my work," said Hart. "The audience were
rightly displeased."

"With you, perhaps," suggested Nell. "I did not observe the feeling."

Hart could no longer control himself. "You vilely read those glorious
lines:

_"See how the gazing People crowd the Place;
All gaping to be fill'd with my Disgrace.
That Shout, like the hoarse Peals of Vultures rings,
When, over fighting Fields they beat their wings."_

"And how should I read them, dear master?" she asked demurely of her
vainglorious preceptor.

"Like I read them, in sooth," replied he, well convinced that his
reading could not be bettered.

"Like you read them, in sooth," replied Nell, meekly. She took the floor
and repeated the lines with the precise action and trick of voice which
Hart had used. Every "r" was wel