'Thank you. It was for this that I asked you to-night. And see--here is your old friend Roland Lee.' The two young men shook hands rather sheepishly--the one because he had been an Ass--a long-eared Ass; and the other, because he was not guiltless of letting his friend slip out of his hands without a remonstrance and so away into paths unknown. 'I hear,' said Armorel, with her beautiful seriousness, 'that you two have suffered yourselves to drift apart of late. I hope that will be all over now. Oh! you must never give up the early friendships. Have you seen Roland's new picture? He has lent it to me for this evening. Come and look at it.' 'Why,' cried one of the men, 'it is an unfinished picture of Alec Feilding's!' Roland turned hot and red. 'Not at all,' said Armorel. 'This is a sketch made in the isles of Scilly and in my presence, five years ago. As for the figure, you see it is not yet completed. I am the model. You remember Scilly, Dick Stephenson? To be sure, you were not with us when we used to go sailing about among the rocks.' 'I have reason to remember Scilly, seeing that you saved my life there, and Roland's too. But the picture is curiously in Feilding's style. Only it seems to me better than any of his. Old man'--he laid his hand on Roland's shoulder: it was the renewal of the ancient friendship--'old man, you've done the trick at last.' Philippa came next, with her father and two or three girls. They, in their turn, called out upon the striking similarity in style. A few more people came, and it was a quarter past nine. But the man for whom Armorel had especially arranged her little comedy did not come. He was late. Perhaps he would not come at all. 'We must wait no longer,' said Armorel. 'Will everybody please to sit down?' Philippa placed herself at the piano. Armorel took out her violin and tuned it. First, however, she made a little speech. 'I have asked you,' she said, 'to come this evening in order to hear a play read. It is a play written by a young gentleman in whom some of us take the deepest interest. I hope greatly that it will succeed. But we want your judgment and opinion as well as our own. The play belongs to all time and to no time. The scene is laid in Italy, and in the sixteenth century; but it might as well have been laid in London and in the nineteenth--only that we are more self-governed than a dramatist likes, and we conceal our emotions. It is a play of romance and of human passion. I entreat you to consider it seriously--as seriously as the author himself considers it. We have arranged for you a list of the dramatis personæ, with a little scenario of each act--there are three--and we think that if, instead of hearing it read, we have it recited, while the author himself plays the piece before us by puppets on this little stage, we shall get a clearer idea of the dramatic merits of the piece.'