‘Well,’ said Mr. Flittergilt, pulling on a new glove, and making a wry face, perhaps at the tightness of the glove—perhaps at the awkwardness of the question—‘I admit there was a germ in that last piece at the Vaudeville, which I have ripened and expanded, you know. There always is a germ, you see, Maurice. It’s only from the brains of a Jove that you get a full-grown Minerva at a rush.’ ‘I understand. The piece is a clever adaptation. Why, what’s this?’ It was a name in the programme which evoked that sudden question. ‘Celia Flower, Miss Justina Elgood.’ ‘Flittergilt,’ said Maurice, solemnly, ‘I know that young woman, and I regret to inform you that, though really a superior girl in private life, she is a very poor actress. If the fortunes of your piece are entrusted to her, I am sorry for you.’ ‘If she acts as well to-night as she did this morning at rehearsal, I shall be satisfied,’ replied Mr. Flittergilt. ‘But how did you come to know her?’ Maurice told the story of those two days at Eborsham. ‘Poor child, when last I saw her she was bowed down with grief for my murdered friend. I dare say she has forgotten all about him by this time.’ ‘She doesn’t look like a girl who would easily forget,’ said the dramatist. The curtain rose on one of those daintily furnished interiors which the modern stage realizes to such perfection. Flowers, birds, statuettes, pictures, a glimpse of sunlit garden on one side, and an open piano on the other. A girl was seated on the central ottoman, looking over a photograph album. A young man was in a half-recumbent position at her feet, looking up at her. The girl was Justina Elgood—the old Justina, and yet a new Justina—so wondrously had the overgrown girl of seventeen improved in womanly beauty and grace. The dark blue eyes, with their depth of thought and tenderness of expression, were alone unchanged. Maurice could have recognised the girl anywhere by those eyes. The management had provided the costumes for the piece, and Justina, in her white silk dress, with its voluminous frills and flouncings, looked as elegant a young woman as one could desire to see offered up, Iphigenia-like, on the altar of loyalty at St. James’s Palace, to be almost torn to pieces on a drawing-room day. Celia Flower is the heroine of the comedy, and this is her wedding morning, and this young man at her feet is a cousin and rejected lover. She is looking over the portraits of her friends, in order to determine which she shall preserve and which drop after marriage. Mr. Flittergilt’s comedy goes on to show that Celia’s intended union is altogether a mistake, that she really loves the rejected cousin, that he honestly loves her, that nothing but misery can result from the marriage of interest which has been planned by Celia’s relatives.