And so to the theatre he went. It was quite early, and he was fortunate in securing a seat in the centre of the first row of boxes, immediately in front of the stage. In the meantime, Zuleime had been conducted by Mrs. Knight into the theatre, and introduced into the common dressing-room of the stock actresses. This was a large room, with a broad shelf or dresser running around three sides of the walls, and about four feet from the floor. This served as bureaus, dressing-tables, and wash-stands for nine women, each of the three sides being occupied by three, who equally divided the shelf, each one having her hand-boxes under the shelf, and her looking-glass on top of it, leaning against the wall, and her wash-basin, jars of rouge, boxes of powder, pots of pomatum, etc., standing around it. On introducing her companion into this apartment, Mrs. Knight said— “All women belonging to the theatre use this as a common dressing-room, except the ballet girls, who have one to themselves, and the stars, who have separate and well furnished rooms.” About half a dozen women were present now, each before her own glass, with her own tallow candle, making her toilet. “Who’s that, Knight, that you’ve got there?” asked a coarse-featured, black-eyed girl, who always played the hoyden, or the wit, and fondly believed herself a proficient in the Rosalind and Beatrice line. “I say, Knight! is that the young ‘lady?’” she repeated, turning around with a little wad of raw cotton, dipped in carmine, between her finger and thumb, and exhibiting a face in process of being rejuvenated—namely, with one young and blooming cheek, and one prematurely old and sallow. “Yes, this is the young lady, Barry,” said Mrs. Knight, very gravely, as she led her protégé off to her own corner of the common dresser. “I think she might have sent her down with the ballet girls, as she is really one of them,” grumbled a large, important looking female, arranging a huge turban and curls upon her head, at the farther end of the room. Two new ideas besides that of the common dressing-room and the dressing shelf in general, Zuleime had got—namely, first, that there really was some very lofty notions of rank and exclusiveness even among the members of the stock company of a second rate theatre—secondly, that they really, after all, did not differ much in that or any other respect from people she had met in very high society, except, indeed, that they had the odious habit of calling each other “Knight” or “Barry,” as men do, without a prefix of any sort.