“Thank Heaven, the creature’s gone! Bolt the door, Mrs. Bonnets. I’ll have no more visitors till the play’s over!” Pamela Pounce was not bidden remain this time; but she could not bring herself to leave the dressing-room until Miss Falcon’s last appearance there. Talk of plays! What a tremendous play she had seen that night. ’Twould be like walking out before the last curtain dropped to go home now. When the actress returned she was accompanied only by Lord Harborough. As he led her in he looked at her hand. “I see,” he said, “you have not honoured my poor gift.” “My Lord,” she said, “I have honoured you sixty-five times with these pearls. Is it not enough? As for rings, there is a slave weight about them. I hate them. But is this really mine? Mine to do as I will with?” He smiled at each question, and Pamela thought that, for all his fond admiration, there was a sort of contemptuous indulgence lurking in his glance--that he had the air of one who says to himself, “These pretty tricks are known; these charming moods are part of the little game. I have not the enthusiasm of youth, but I have experience, I have toleration, and I have patience!” “It is an elegant and artistic ring,” said Miss Falcon, lifting it to the light of the wax candles which branched from her mirror. “A sapphire, I see, and all chased.” “It was found,” said Lord Harborough, “in a Roman tomb. There is not another like it in the world!” “And what does it represent? Oh, I see snakes about that strange little face!” “’Tis a Medusa head.” “What?” she cried. “What an ill omen for an actress! How terrible if I were to turn my audience to stone. Fie, I would not keep such a thing about me for the world! Pray, Miss Pounce, will you accept this trifle in memory of our first acquaintance and of, oh, your beautiful hat! How kind of you, dear girl, to stay and see the last of me. Why, it just fits your finger! Nay, I will take no refusal. My cloak, Bonnets! La, I am mortal tired. Pray, my Lord, good night. Well, as far as the coach then, but no further. Remember our compact!” “As far as the coach,” said the peer, with his disillusioned smile. “As far as the coach at least, lovely mystery, beautiful secret! Oh, the Medusa head would have been vastly appropriate, I assure you!” They went forth, and Pamela Pounce stared at her ring. She had never felt, in all her varied energetic existence, thus puzzled and troubled. “Heaven ha’ mercy,” she thought, “what a prodigious bit of insolence, to give it to me under his very nose! And, oh, lud, what’s a body to think? Will he marry her after all and my poor Miss Sarah and Mr. W. be cut out? She wears his pearls and drives in his coach, and yet withal he’s to lead her no further than its door!” * * * * *