left the lady, like Archibald Dorrimore, to drink
herself into insensibility.

"The devil looks after his own," chuckled Rofflash as he swaggered down
the Strand. "It'll go hard if I don't squeeze fifty guineas out of that
idiot Dorrimore over to-morrow night's work! He'd give that to have the
pleasure of running the scribbler through the body. Lord, if I'd
breathed a word of _that_ to Sally! No fool like an old fool, they say.
Bah! The foolishest thing in Christendom is a woman when she's in love."

And Captain Jeremy Rofflash plodded on, well pleased with himself. He
took the road which would lead him to Moorfields and Grub Street.

CHAPTER XX

"WHAT DID I TELL THEE, POLLY?"

Lavinia went to her first rehearsal in a strange confusion of spirits,
but came through the ordeal successfully. She was letter perfect, and
she remembered all Spiller's instructions. Mr. Huddy was pleased to say
that he thought she would do.

She left the theatre for her lodgings in Little Queen Street in a
flutter of excitement. Otway's "Orphan" might be dull and lachrymose,
the part of Serina might be insignificant, but to Lavinia the play was
the most wonderful thing. It meant a beginning. She had got the chance
she had longed for. She saw herself in imagination a leading lady.

But when she returned to her lodgings a reaction set in. She was
depressed. Life had suddenly become drab and dull. She was thinking of
Lancelot Vane, but not angrily, as was the case the previous night when
she walked away her head high in the air after seeing Sally
Salisbury--of all women in the world!--in his arms. She was in a tumult
of passion, and when that subsided tears of indignation rushed to her
eyes. She made no excuses for her recreant lover, no allowances for
accidents and misadventures. She did not, indeed, think he had set out
to insult her, but the unhappy fact was patent that he knew the wanton
Sally, and that he had a tender regard for her. Lavinia's reading of the
thing was that in her anxiety she had arrived at the trysting place too
soon. Ten minutes later and Vane would have got rid of his old love and
taken on with his new one. Oh, it was humiliating to think of!

Lavinia walked away in her rage. By the time she reached Little Queen
Street, the storm had passed. She had arrived at the conclusion that all
men were faithless, selfish, dishonourable. For the future she would
have naught to do with them.

The excitement of the re