HECTOR. [_Coaxingly._] Sit down, laddie--just one rubber. It's quite early. Do. There's a good chap. [_They all sit:_ HECTOR _at back,_ BETTY _to the left of him,_ WALTER _to the right--he spreads out the cards--they draw for partners._] As we are--you and Betty--I've got the dummy. [_He shuffles the cards_--BETTY _cuts--he begins to deal._] That's how I like it--one on each side of me. Also I like having dummy. Now, Betty, play up. Oh, Lord, how good it is, how good! A nightmare, I tell you--terrible! And really you must forgive me for being such an ass. But the way you played up, both of you! My little Betty--a Duse, that's what she is--a real Duse! [_He gathers up his cards._] And the gods are kind to me--I've got a hand, I tell you! I call NO TRUMPS! [_He beams at them--they are placidly sorting their cards. He puts his hand down and proceeds to look at his dummy, as the curtain falls._ CURTAIN A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED.... THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY MR. HARRISON CROCKSTEAD LADY ALINE DE VAUX _Produced at the Garrick Theatre on March 27, 1904_ A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED.... SCENE _The conservatory of No. 300 Grosvenor Square. Hour, close on midnight. A ball is in progress, and dreamy waltz music is heard in the distance._ LADY ALINE DE VAUX _enters, leaning on the arm of_ MR. HARRISON CROCKSTEAD. LADY ALINE _is a tall, exquisitely-gowned girl, of the conventional and much-admired type of beauty. Put her in any drawing-room in the world, and she would at once be recognised as a highborn Englishwoman. She has in her, in embryo, all those excellent qualities that go to make a great lady: the icy stare, the haughty movement of the shoulder, the disdainful arch of the lip; she has also, but only an experienced observer would notice it, something of wistfulness, something that speaks of a sore and wounded heart--though it is sufficiently evident that this organ is kept under admirable control. A girl who has been placed in a position of life where artificiality rules, who has been taught to be artificial and has thoroughly learned her lesson; yet one who would unhesitatingly know the proper thing to do did a camel bolt with her in the desert, or an eastern potentate invite her to become his two hundred and fifty-seventh wife. In a word, a lady of complete self-possession and magnificent control._ MR. CROCKSTEAD _is a big, burly man of forty or so, and of the kind to whom the ordinary West End butler would consider himself perfectly justified in declaring that her ladyship was not at home. And yet his evening clothes sit well on him; and there is a certain air of command about the man that would have made the butler uncomfortable. That functionary would have excused himself by declaring that_ MR. CROCKSTEAD _didn't look a gentleman. And perhaps he doesn't.