I sympathised with his feelings against making their meeting a scene for the amusement of frivolous lookers-on, and we waited patiently enough. Neither of us could have told, when the play was over, what was the story it presented. Even Madge's speeches we heard with less sense of their meaning than emotion at the sound of her voice. If this was the case with me, how much more so, as I could see by side-glances at his face, was it with Philip! Between the acts, we had little use for conversation. One of our thoughts, though neither uttered it, was that, despite the reputation that play-actresses generally bore, a woman _could_ live virtuously by the profession, and in it, and that several women since the famous Mrs. Bracegirdle were allowed to have done so. 'Twas only necessary to look at our Madge, to turn the possibility in her case into certainty. When at last the play was ended, we forced our way through the departing crowd so as to arrive almost with the first upon the scene of waiting footmen, shouting drivers, turbulent chair-men, clamorous boys with dim lanterns or flaming torches, and such attendants upon the nightly emptying of a playhouse. Through this crush we fought our way, hastened around into a darker street, comparatively quiet and deserted, and found a door with a feeble lamp over it, which, as a surly old fellow within told us, served as stage entrance to the theatre. We crossed the dirty street, and took up our station in the shadow opposite the door; whence a few actors not required in the final scene, or not having to make much alteration of attire for the street, were already emerging, bent first, I suppose, for one or other of the many taverns or coffee-houses about Covent Garden near at hand. While we were waiting, two chair-men came with their vehicle and set it down at one side of the door, and a few boys and women gathered in the hope of obtaining sixpence by some service of which a player might perchance be in need on issuing forth. And presently a coach appeared at the corner of the street, and stopped there, whereupon a gentleman got out of it, gave the driver and footman some commands, and while the conveyance remained where it was, approached alone, at a blithe gait, and took post near us, though more in the light shed by the lamp over the stage door. "Gad's life!" I exclaimed, in a whisper. "What is it?" asked Phil, in a similar voice. "Falconer!" I replied, ere I had thought. Philip gazed at the newcomer, who was heedless of our presence. Phil seemed about to stride forward to him, but reconsidered, and whispered to me, in a strange tone: "What can he be doing here, where _she_--? You are sure that's the man?" "Yes--but not now--'tis not the place--we came for another purpose--" "I know--but if I lose him!" "No fear of that. I'll keep track of him--learn where he's to be found--while you meet her." "But if he--if she--"