[Illustration: _Distracted Mother (at the top of her voice, outside sick son's room)._ "He won't die! Tell me he won't die!" _Author of Play._ "No, he won't die, because this is a 'happy ending' play, but the noise that goes on outside his room would kill him in ordinary life." _Betty Dunbar_ Miss Eva Moore. _Sir Egbert Englefield_ Mr. H. V. Esmond.] When there is a good deal of talk on the stage about a certain character, who however remains "off" throughout the play and gives you no chance to discover for yourself what he is like, then I have an instinctive distrust of him. If his name is as bad as _Cecil_ he is practically doomed. _Betty Dunbar_, widow, ran away from her rich sister's house and spent a night in London with such a _Cecil_. _Betty_ had arrived at the dangerous age of forty, and was temporarily and ridiculously in love with this young bounder (as I felt him to be) of twenty-two. But the fact that, at the very time when she was thus making a fool of herself in London, her younger son, _Jack_, was falling off a tree and nearly killing himself in the country brought her to her senses. When she returned to the country to find _Jack_ at death's door, her love for _Cecil_ died and she could only think of him with hatred. Now I can remember wondering, when I read _The Vicar of Wakefield_ at an early and innocent age, why _Dr. Primrose_ was so anxious that his daughter _Olivia_ should be married to the beast with whom she had eloped, when it would be so much better for her if _Thornhill_ left her (as he was willing to do) and she returned unmarried to her father. I am older now, and I know that in the good Vicar's opinion only thus could his daughter's "honour" be "preserved." But the world is also older now, and perhaps the oldest person in it is the woman suffragist--such a one, for instance, as _Betty's_ elder sister, _Ethel_, who carried copies of _Votes for Women_ about with her when she strolled through the home park. That _Ethel_ should share _Dr. Primrose's_ ingenuous views on this matter is unbelievable--by me, but not by the author. For she insisted, under threat of cutting off supplies, that _Betty_ should marry _Cecil_, and (so to speak) become a lady again. _Betty_ wisely refused, which left the way clear for _Sir Egbert Englefield_, and so brought down the curtain. I haven't mentioned _Sir Egbert_ before, but he was there or thereabouts all the time, and being in the flesh Mr. H. V. Esmond, author of the play, it was obvious that he would have the pull over any unseen _Cecil_ in the final arrangement of partners.