The talk fell upon these immediately, and he forthwith perceived that he was in for it. And why not? he asked himself. How did it endanger him, or why should he shun it? All the Cove and the countryside for twenty miles around knew of his feats of sleight of hand; and since accident had revealed his knack to this little coterie of well-bred and well-placed young men, why should he grudge the exhibition to the few scores of ladies and children at New Helvetia, to aid the little diversion of the evening? His scruples could have no force now, for this would bring him--the social pariah!--no nearer to them than when he sat by the tenpin-alley and humbly watched his betters play. The episode of the jugglery, once past, would be an old story and bereft of interest. He would have had his little day, basking in the sun of the applause of his superiors, and would sink back to his humble obscurity at the side of the bowling-alley. Should he show any disposition to presume upon the situation, he realized that they well understood the art of repressing a forward inferior. The entertainment contemplated no subsequent social festivities. The programme, made out with many an interlineation, had been calculated to occupy all the time until eleven o’clock; and Royce, looking at it with the accustomed eye of a manager of private theatricals, felt himself no prophet to discern that midnight would find the exhausted audience still seated, enjoying that royal good measure of amusement always meted out by bounteous amateurs. Throughout the evening he would be immured with the other young men in the close little pens which served for dressing and green rooms,--for all the actors in the farce were to be men,--save for the fraction of time when his jugglery would necessitate his presence on the stage. True, Miss Fordyce, should she patronize the entertainment, might then have to look at him somewhat more discerningly than she would look at the wall, perhaps! It could surely do her no harm. She had seen worse men, he protested, with eager self-assertion. She owed him that much,--one glance, one moment’s cognition of his existence. It was not much to ask. He had made a great sacrifice for her sake, and all unknown to her. He had had regard to her estimate of her dignity and held it dear. He had done her reverence from the depths of his heart, regardless that it cost him his last hope.