“Why, Miss O’Finn, I am glad you’ve looked in this morning. Mr. Percy Mortimer”—the agent’s harsh voice sank to a reverential murmur—“Mr. Percy Mortimer has had some difficulty with the lady he engaged to play rather an important part in his new play at the Athenæum, and his secretary wrote to me to ask if I would send some ladies to interview him with a view to his engaging one of them. He requires a tall dark lady of some presence, and of course with the necessary experience. This would be a splendid opportunity for you, Miss O’Finn, if you happened to please Mr. Mortimer.” “Naturally I should like nothing better than to be at the Athenæum,” said Nancy in a voice that was nearly as full of awe as the agent’s. “It isn’t so much the salary,” he pointed out. “In fact, Mr. Mortimer does not believe in paying very large salaries to the actors and actresses who are supporting him. He thinks—and he is undoubtedly right—that to have one’s name on the programmes of the Athenæum is the equivalent of several pounds at most of the other London theatres. “Now, don’t talk too much about it before Mr. Mortimer has even seen me,” Nancy begged. “He’ll be at the Athenæum this afternoon at half-past three. I’m only sending along two other ladies. And I think you’re just what he wants.” Mr. Percy Mortimer was something more than a great figure of the London stage; he was an institution. Everybody agreed that should Her Majesty decide to create another theatrical knight Percy Mortimer was undoubtedly the one she would select for the accolade. The prime cause of his renown in England was that if there was ever any question of choice between being an actor or a gentleman he would always put good breeding before art. This was held to be elevating the drama. If by chance the public disapproved of any play he produced, Percy Mortimer always apologised before the curtain on the first night and laid the blame on the author. Two or three years before this date he was acting in a play by a famous dramatist who became involved in a sensational and scandalous lawsuit. Percy Mortimer did not take off the play. He owed something to art. But he paid his debt to good breeding by expunging the author’s name from the playbills and the programmes. Nancy had to pass the vigilance of various chamberlains, constables, and seneschals before she reached the Presence, a handsome man with a face as large and smooth as a perfectly cured ham. “Miss O’Finn?” he inquired graciously, with a glance at her card. “Of Irish extraction, perhaps?” She nodded. “A part is vacant in my new play,” he announced. “The public is anxious to see me in historical drama, and I have decided to produce Mr. Philip Stevens’s _Cœur de Lion_. The vacant part is that of a Saracen woman who has escaped from the harem of Saladin. It is not a long part, but it is an extremely important part, because the only scene in which this character appears is played as a duologue with myself.”