“Could my Lady Bell not dress up herself more fitly than in the cloak of a gipsy fortune-teller, when there were crowns and sceptres, wands and wings, in the room?” the gentleman reproached his partner with delirious fervour, softly grasping a corner of the maligned cloak. “I saw no acting,” cried Lady Bell in a flurry, to render the conversation less personal. “A strolling troop, in a barn, would have managed infinitely better. This was all fudge and lampooning. I did not ask for true acting, but I expected something nearer to it from persons of refinement and education. I am going to have the real thing to-morrow.” “Tell me where, Lady Bell,” he solicited directly. “I am going to the play, sir, the veritable play; no wonder everybody rushes to Covent Garden and Drury Lane; though some pretend that there are private theatricals worth listening to, I should feel inclined to doubt it, after to-night. I am to have a box in company with Miss Greathead of Guy’s Cliff, who knows Mrs. Siddons—she is taking the Londoners’ hearts by storm, after they nearly broke her heart years ago.” “How do you know that?” he asked for the mere sake of hearing her speak and detaining her a moment longer. “Oh, I know Mrs. Siddons finely,” she sparkled back upon him, enjoying what she imagined to be his curiosity, “and perhaps some day,” she lowered her voice inadvertently and the tell-tale colour leapt up in her cheeks, “I shall tell you how she and I came to be personal friends. You have never seen her? Then you have never seen such a genius on the boards. Miss Yates is nothing to her; she eclipses Mr. Garrick himself.” He was not caring for geniuses on the boards at that moment, however much he might care for them at another. What were the stage and its stars to Harry Fane, when Lady Bell had availed herself of his assistance, had preferred his protection to that of any man of her set at the masquerade, and when the words, “Some day I shall tell you how she and I came to be personal friends,” were ringing sweetly in his ears? CHAPTER XVIII. ROMEO AND JULIET ON THE STAGE, AND IN LADY BELL TREVOR AND MISS GREATHEAD’S BOX. Harry Fane found it easier to join Lady Bell in her box with Miss Greathead at Covent Garden than at the masquerade ball. Notwithstanding that, the tide which had turned and was bearing the great actress on to fortune, was so full in its rush, that the crowd at White’s was nothing to the jammed mass filling to suffocation the huge theatre. In the private box Miss Greathead, the other “Lady of Quality,” was considerate and generous.