Something must have happened to Jane-Anne. Could she be ill? This tall, angular person in spectacles, with what he secretly stigmatized as a "bombazine manner," must be some elderly lady imported at the last moment to play the part. That she played it uncommonly well did not concern Mr. Wycherly; he was anxious about Jane-Anne. What could have happened to the child? The play was quite amusing. The lady with the bombazine manner raised a laugh whenever she opened her lips, but Mr. Wycherly couldn’t feel interested. He was worried. It must be some sudden and prostrating headache that had prevented her appearance. Yet when did he ever remember Jane-Anne to have a headache when theatricals were to the fore? The little play soon came to an end amidst enthusiastic applause. Mr. Wycherly thought it rather unfeeling of Curly to clap so vigorously. He didn’t seem a bit anxious about Jane-Anne. The plaudits were so prolonged that the curtain was raised again and the two ladies took their call. She of the spectacles and wispy grey hair dragged into a tight knob at the back, bowed stiffly and ungraciously as befitted her character, but just as she reached the wings she snatched off her spectacles with one hand and with the other deliberately blew a kiss to Mr. Wycherly. There was no mistaking it. The kiss was for him and for no one else, and the eyes hitherto discreetly hidden behind the spectacles were exceeding dark and young and merry. Then it was that Mr. Wycherly realised that she had not failed at the last moment, this extraordinary Jane-Anne of his. She was the lady of the bombazine manner. When they reached the street he murmured to Curly in almost awe-struck tones, "And I never recognised her at all till the curtain went up the second time." "So I saw," said Curly. "She looked so old, so severe, so hard somehow and unlovely." "For the time being, she was Mrs. Tallet, you see," Curly explained. "It wasn’t her appearance only, her whole atmosphere seemed so grasping and grim." "That," Curly remarked sententiously, "is acting." * * * * * It was gala day at the dancing-class, and Mr. Wycherly sat on the raised daïs reserved for parents and onlookers. He had come to watch Jane-Anne as a pupil for the last time. There were many "fancy dances" performed by fresh-faced girls who manipulated their accordion-pleated skirts with a certain pretty pride in their achievement—all but Jane-Anne. She, slender and dark, with little oval face and shadowy heavy hair, drawn back from her forehead, with the upward sweep of Botticelli’s angels—she danced! She wore a plain little frock of black chiffon, caught in round her slender waist by a narrow black cord. Mrs. Methuen had chosen the dress, and it was full of distinction in its dainty severity; such a plain little dress among its rainbow-hued, fresh-millinered companions. And how she danced!