And then at last it was discovered that Francis Tredethlyn, who had volunteered to carry a tea-tray or a coal-scuttle, or to announce a carriage, or to perform any ignominious part in the drama for Miss Hillary’s pleasure,--it was discovered all at once that this young man was able to act. He was no untaught Macready, no ready-made Kean; but he was able to do what the best of the government clerks and literary barristers failed in doing; he was able to roll out the melodious blank verse in a big, deep voice, that never failed him to the end of the chapter. The stage is almost as great a leveller as death himself, and on that little platform at Twickenham uneducated Francis Tredethlyn was quite as much at his ease as the well-bred young men about him: more at his ease, for he was not so bent upon distinguishing himself, and was indeed only eager to oblige Miss Hillary. All this had happened before the autumn visit to Brighton; and now when Maude returned to the Cedars she found busy workmen making a perpetual hammering in the apartment which had been chosen for the scene of the entertainment. Mr. Hillary did everything in a superb manner; there was to be no pitiful contrivance of folding-doors festooned by suburban carpenters, but accomplished people from town had come down to the Cedars, and a magnificent archway of white and gold spanned the lofty billiard-room which the merchant had built at one end of his house. All the arrangements were to be perfection; the lighting of the small stage was to be a miracle of art; the grouping of the furniture had been studied by _genre_ painters of no mean pretensions. Poor Maude grew sick at heart as she heard all these details discussed. She looked back, and wondered, as she remembered what a frivolous creature she had been only a few months ago, and how this amateur dramatic performance had seemed a matter of supreme importance to her; and now she repeated the words mechanically during those long rehearsals, in the course of which the amateurs had so many angry disputations, and so cruelly victimized Mr. Hillary’s pale sherry. At last the new year began, and at ten o’clock upon the first night in January long lines of carriages filled the avenue at the Cedars, and the road outside the lodge-gates, until the neighbourhood was luminous with flaring lamps that glared redly in the winter darkness. People came from far and wide to see Miss Hillary play _Pauline_, and to devour Mr. Gunter’s supper, though Miss Hillary’s heart might be breaking, and the merchant’s head splitting with the weight of care that pressed just now upon his overtaxed brain! But people _do_ get through, these things somehow; and Lionel Hillary walked about his drawing-rooms, looking supremely gentlemanly in a stiff cambric cravat, and uttering mild commonplaces for the edification of new arrivals.