Honourable John MacMadden, was waiting at the
stage-door. Captain MacMadden belonged to the Household Brigade, and
was a bachelor of five-and-thirty. He parted his hair in the middle, and
wore a moustache and weeping whiskers of the jettiest, shiny black. He
smiled constantly, to show a set of dazzling white teeth. In his own
mind Paul loaded this exquisite with savage satire. He was a tailor's
dummy carrying about a barber's dummy, and the barber's dummy was
finished with a dentist's advertisement He carried a very thin
umbrella--the mere ghost of an umbrella--he was gloved and booted with
the fineness of a lady, and he was always delicately perfumed. He was
reported to be wealthy, abominably wealthy, and three nights a week or
more he would present himself at the theatre, and take Miss Belmont out
to supper. But so discreet was that lady, and so careful of her good
report, that Captain MacMadden never came without a guardian dragon in
the person of another young lady of the theatres, who was accompanied by
a gentleman who was in all points tailored and barbered and gloved and
booted like Captain MacMadden himself.

Paul would wonder if the splendid warrior were below until he could
endure himself no longer. Then he would descend and hang about the
stage-door, to find his enemy or not to find him, as the case might be,
but in either event to eat his heart in jealousy and impatience. When
he found him he burned to insult him by asking him what tailor he
advertised, or by addressing him as the Housemaid's Terror or the
Nursegirl's Blight. He ground tegmenta of 'Maud' between his teeth as
he looked at him. 'His essences turn the live air sick,' and 'that oiled
and curled Assyrian bull, smelling of musk and of insolence.' And it
happened one night that Captain MacMadden, arriving late, and in a
mighty hurry and flutter lest he should have missed the lady, tapped
Paul upon the shoulder, and said:

'My boy, can you tell me if Miss Belmont has left the theatre?'

Paul, who was at that instant bending all the force of his mind upon
Captain MacMadden, and punching his head in visioned combat, turned
on him with a passionate 'Damn your impertinence, sir!' which set the
startled gentleman agape with wonder. At this instant Claudia pushed
through the swinging door which led from the stage to the corridor, and
she ran in between the belligerent Paul and the object of his rage.

'What is this?' she asked.

'This gentleman,' sai