t "Miss H. Leroy" should pass into the actress
Hyacinthe King.

"Aunts, I went out by myself," the girl says as she dawdles shyly over
her newly-acquired habit of tea-drinking that evening, "because I
knew--I fancied--that you, Aunt Juliet, would not care to go with me
where I was going."

"Yes, dear," says Miss Juliet, glad to have the curious child of her
favorite brother back with her in safety.

"A foolish and an unwarrantable step, Hyacinthe, which I trust--I
trust--you will never repeat." Thus Miss King, adding with severity,
"May I inquire, Hyacinthe, where you went?"

"To Bozati the ballet-master first."

"To whom?" Miss King draws forth an old-fashioned salts-bottle, and
Miss Juliet glances nervously at the tea-tray. "To whom? Can it be
possible that my niece, your father's daughter--No, no! my ears
deceive me."

"He said I never could learn to be anything more than a coryphee,
aunt, and I knew that that would not be accounted an art," she says
quite low. "But I then went to Mr. Arbuthnot. You know him, aunt?"

"I have heard of such a person," answers Miss King, peering austerely
over her spectacles at Hyacinthe.

"He has engaged me at a salary of two pounds a week, and he says that
some day I shall be great." Her eyes dilate and look out afar, through
the tiny window-panes, into a limitless and superb future. "I have
found my art; and I am so happy!"

Miss Juliet's glance intercepts her sister's speech. There is silence
in the quaint, small parlor that night; and for the first time in many
a year the memory of her lost lover's first kiss rests softly on Miss
King's wan, wrinkled cheek: for the first time in many a year she has
remembered the perfection of him and forgotten the perfidy.

That was October.

This is June.

"For thirty-seven consecutive nights the girl has held the public of
this great capital spellbound by the magical power of her art. She
has great beauty--Greek features lighted up by Northern vividness and
intellectuality; but transcendent beauty falls to the lot of very many
actresses, yet it is not to be said of any one of them that they have
what this unheralded, unknown girl possesses--tragic genius such as
thrilled through the Hebrew veins of dead Rachel, and flew from her, a
magnetic current, straight to the hearts and brains of her auditors.
Of such metal is made this new star. She has as yet appeared but in
one _role_, that of Adrienne in Scribe's play, but within the co