Before her eyes, indeed, there is a phantasmagoria of people going and coming in a blaze of light--of more be-peasanted Misses Hartley, with more banditted brothers; in her ears a brisk dialogue that must be funny, judging from the roars of laughter coming from behind her; of smart galloping quartettes and trios that must be humorous and musical, from the storm of applause and encores that greet them. But to her brain penetrate none of the gay and smiling images conveyed by her senses. Her brain is wholly occupied by the painful and impossible effort to calm Prue, whose agitation, rendered more unmanageable by the weakness of her state of health and the lack of any habit of self-government, threatens to become uncontrollable. 'Oh, Peggy, why has not he come? What has become of him? Where can he be?' she keeps moaningly whispering. Peggy has taken hold of one of her sister's feverish hands, whose dry fire is felt even through her glove, and presses it now and again. 'He will be here directly,' she answers soothingly; 'no doubt he could not get away. You heard how useful he has been! Probably he is helping them behind the scenes. Do not you think that you could try to look a little less miserable? I am so afraid that people will remark it.' 'If he is behind the scenes,' moans Prue, not paying any heed to, evidently hardly hearing, this gentle admonition, 'he is with her. You see that she is not acting either! Wherever they are, they are together! Oh, Peggy, I think I shall die of misery!' The close of her sentence is drowned in a tempest of riotous applause, and Peggy's eyes involuntarily turn to the stage, to learn the cause. One of the performers, who has been throughout pre-eminently the funny man of the piece, is singing a solo, accompanied by many facetious gestures. The drift of the song is the excessive happiness of the singer--a theme which is enlarged upon through half a dozen successive verses: 'The lark is blithe, And the summer fly; Blithe is the cricket, And blithe am I. None so blithe, so blithe as I!' Peggy happens to have some acquaintance with the singer off the stage; knows him to be sickly, melancholy, poor; to-night racked with neuralgia, yet obliged to do his little tricks, and go through his small antics, on penalty of banishment from that society, his sole _raison d'être_ in which is his gift of making people laugh. 'La Comédie Humaine!' she says to herself--'La Comédie Humaine!' CHAPTER XXXIV 'We men may say more, swear more; but indeed, Our shows are more than will, for still we prove Much in our vows, but little in our love.'