All the other old ladies said that Mrs. Fortescue was a daughter of Belial, a play actress, and no old lady, anyway. I know nothing about her ancestry--and I don’t believe that she did, either; but as to the other two counts in the indictment I am afraid I must plead guilty for Mrs. Fortescue. An actress she was, to the tips of her fingers, an unconscious, involuntary, dyed-in-the-wool actress. She acted because she could not help it, not from any wish to deceive or mislead, but just because it came as natural to her as breathing. If you asked her to take a piece of pie, it was not enough for her to want the pie, and to tell you so, and to take the pie; she had to act out the whole dramatic business of the situation--her passion for pie, her eager craving and anxious expectation, her incredulous delight when she actually got the pie, and her tender, brooding thankfulness and gratitude when she had got outside of the pie, and put it where it couldn’t be taken away from her. No; there wasn’t the least bit of humbug in it all. She did want the pie; but she wanted to act, too. [Illustration] It was this characteristic of Mrs. Fortescue that got her into the Old Ladies’ Home on false pretenses; for, to tell the truth, Mrs. Fortescue was only an old lady by courtesy. She had beautiful white hair; but she had had beautiful white hair ever since she was twenty years old. Before she had reached that age she had had red hair, black hair, brown hair, golden hair, and hair of half-a-dozen intermediate shades. Either the hair or the hair dye finally got tired, and Mrs. Fortescue’s head became white--that is, when she gave it a chance to be its natural self. That, however, was not often; and, at last, there came a day when, as her manager coarsely expressed it, “she monkeyed with her fur one time too many.” For ten years she had been the leading lady in a small traveling opera company, where tireless industry and a willingness to wait for salary were accepted as substitutes for extreme youth and commanding talent. Ten years is a long time, especially when it is neither the first nor the second, and, possibly, not the third ten years of an actress’s professional career; and when Mrs. Fortescue asked for a contract for three years more, her manager told her that he was not in the business for his health, and that While he regarded her as one of the most elegant ladies he had ever met in his life, her face was not made of India rubber; and, furthermore, that the public was just about ready for the Spring styles in leading ladies. This did not hurt Mrs. Fortescue’s feelings, for the leading juvenile had long been in the habit of calling her “Mommer, dear,” whenever they had to rehearse impassioned love scenes. But it did put her on her mettle, and she tried a new hair dye, just to show what she could do. The result was a case of lead poisoning, that laid her up in a dirty little second-class hotel,