"I hope you exonerate me. I could not help it. I am more vexed about it than you can be." "I think you might have said emphatically just at first you did not wish it. However, it does not matter." "How could I? Such a remark would have been an implied rudeness to you." "Then I wish you had been rude." "You are unreasonable, Miss Beatoun," says his lordship, stiffly. Then in a still lower tone, "There are few things I would not do for you, but that is not one of them." "I think you had better go and put on those garments Sir Mark rejected. We can finish the argument later on," murmurs Bebe, turning away, with a half-smile, and, Lord Chandos hurrying over his toilet, we have them on our miniature stage sooner than we dared to hope. But, though they gave in to their own wishes, or rather to their own pride, the performance is a failure, for, though Bebe certainly manages to look the very personification of hardened persistency, Lord Chandos by no means comes up to our idea of the appealing and despairing adorer, and altogether there is a stony finish about it that nobody admires. The spectators are, indeed, polite, and say all manner of pretty things, but they say them from the lips alone, which is palpable and not satisfactory. And now comes my turn. The "British public," as Mr. Thornton persists on calling our very select audience, is requested to turn its kind attention on Tennyson's "Sleeping Princess," wrapped in mystic slumber. I am the Sleeping Princess, it having struck me in the early part of the day that this _role_, requiring little beyond extreme inaction, would exactly suit me, and cause me less trepidation. Upon a crimson lounge, clad all in white, I lie, my long fair brown hair scattered across the cushions and falling to the ground beside me. One hand is thrown above my head, the other hangs listlessly, sleepily, downwards; a deep-red rose has dropped from it, and now blushes, half lost, amidst the tresses on the floor. Sir Mark, in the character of the Prince, leans over me as though in the act of giving the caress that brings me back from dreamland. His face, I know, is near--so near that, between nervousness and shrinking, I feel a mad desire to break into forbidden laughter; so much so that when the curtain falls I am more than thankful. Slowly it descends, and as I hear it touch the stage, I cautiously open my eyes--to find Sir Mark has not yet raided himself from his stooping posture. My eyes look straight into his. There are literally only few inches between his face and mine, and I fancy I can discern a treacherous gleam in them. Something masterful, too, in his expression, as though he would say, "I could an' I would," strikes me. Instantly I resent it, and springing to my feet, stand back from him, crimson with indignation and some undefined fear.