"Well, in any case I am glad you have not won my bangle," cried Dick Darling, as she slipped it over her dimpled wrist. "I always make it a point to pay up my debts of honour on the spot, I can't bear a 'Welcher,' so you would have been obliged to take my ruby fly, had you been successful, Mr. Tremain, and that would have been death to me, simply death." "With such an alternative, Miss Dick," replied Philip, with increased gravity, and bowing across Esther, "I am devoutly thankful to have lost, for to have been the indirect cause of your untimely decease, would have branded me for ever in my own eyes!" Then Mrs. Newbold said time was up, and she must go; the _Ladies' Battle_ would be called in five minutes, and she was wanted behind the scenes; was Mr. Tremain going through with his rôle? But Philip begged off on account of his still lame wrist which he wore bandaged and in a sling; it would be quite effort enough to act when the real representation took place, Mr. Robinson could read his lines and he would imbibe valuable hints from his superior method. Was Mdlle. Lamien to take the Countess d'Autreval's part? "No," replied Esther, fingering her roses a trifle nervously, and looking at him from under her eyelids, "Miss Hildreth has elected to act her own rôle at the rehearsal, consequently Mdlle. Lamien's services will not be required. Ah, Patricia has already left her box, I must go," she added, hastily; and with a hurried gesture she walked towards a side exit, her pale pink draperies sweeping after her, and making a little _frou-frou_ with their silks and laces. Mr. Tremain reseated himself, changing his _fauteuil_ for the one Esther had vacated next to Miss Darling. He leant back negligently and turning his face towards that young lady said carelessly: "Since we neither of us appear on the boards, Miss Dick, let us console one another off them. By the way, where is Miss James? I did not see her come into the theatre after her very capital bit of acting." "Oh, I don't know," answered Miss Darling, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I suppose she is improving her mind somewhere, at the expense of some one. To speak frankly, Mr. Tremain, Rosalie and I are bad friends just now, and I give her as wide a berth as possible." "Oh, indeed," answered Philip, rather bored, and not at all understanding that he was the cause of this bad friendship, since Dick, reading Rosalie's schemes and wishes, had denounced them hotly; and Miss James, with the remembrance of Perkins's slighting remarks still fresh, had replied with equal vigour; and so the breach widened between them day by day.