After some groping and stumbling in the wrong passages and on the wrong stairs, the Editor made his way to the green-room. He could scarcely have told himself why he took this trouble in order to say a few kind words to his old tutor’s daughter, or whether the saying of kind words was at all required from him. It may be that, having given up his evening to this visit to the Oxford Road Theatre, he came behind the scenes merely because he could no longer endure the dreary misery of the boxes; or it may be that he wanted to observe the manners and customs of actors of a different class from those he had been accustomed to meet. Mr. Desmond, however, did not trouble himself with any consideration of his motive. He came to the green-room to see Miss Alford, or Miss St. Albans, because it was the humour of the moment to come. He had given himself an evening’s holiday from the ever-alternating labours of literary and social life, and he was not sorry to lose the sense of his own cares and perplexities amongst strange surroundings. The green-room was a long narrow slip of a room underground, furnished with a few shabby chairs and benches, some flaring gas-lamps, and a cheval-glass, before which the actors and actresses contemplated themselves afresh after every change of costume, more or less pleased with the result of their scrutiny. Mr. Desmond found his friend’s daughter standing before this glass, arranging the scanty festoons of a black tulle ball-dress, dotted about with little bunches of violets--a dress that Mademoiselle Deschapelles could by no possibility have worn at any period of her existence, but which poor Lucy Alford fondly believed was the exact thing for the last act. “How do you do, once more, Miss--St. Albans?” said the editor, going up to the glass. “How do you do, Mr. Desmond?” the girl said, startled, and blushing brightly beneath the artificial pallor which marked the mental agonies of Pauline. “I--I didn’t think you’d come behind; it’s not generally allowed, you know; but of course with you it’s different. I saw you in the dress-circle. How kind of you to come! But it made me so nervous.” “Yes, I could see that you were nervous.” “You could see it! I am sorry for that!” said Lucy, just a little mortified. “My dear young lady, if you were not nervous, you would not be of the sensitive stuff that makes an artist. “You--you were not displeased with me?”