The two elderly strangers accommodated the expression of their views to the evident opinion of those of their time of life, applauding when the gentlemen about them applauded, maintaining an air of interest when they were receptive and attentive. Was it possible, one might wonder in looking at them, that differences so essential could be unremarked--that it was not patent to the most casual observer that they had some far more serious reason for their presence than the indulgent laudation of the amateur entertainment which inspired the friends and relatives of the youthful performers? The perspicacity of the casual observer, however, was hampered by the haze of the pervasive obscurity; from the stage each might seem to the transient glance merely a face among many faces, the divergences of which could be discerned only when some intention or interest informed the gaze. Lucien Royce saw only that oasis in the gloom where the high lights of Miss Fordyce’s delicately tinted costume shone in the dusk. He was keenly mindful of a flash of girlish laughter, the softly luminous glance of her eye, the glimmer of her white teeth as her pink lips curled, the young delight in her face. How should he care to note the null, impassive countenance of the one man, the grizzled stolid bourgeois aspect of the other? The manager, keenly alive to the success of the entertainment, advanced a number of the programme since the pistol trick was discarded. Having observed the fate of this from the wings, he handed to Royce a flower-pot filled with earth for a feat which it had been his intention to reserve until after the first act of the play. “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the juggler, “oblige me by looking at this acorn. It is considered quite harmless. True, it will shoot, too, if you give it half a chance; but I am told,” with a glance of raillery, “that its projectile effects are not deleterious in any respect to the human anatomy.” The ladies who had been afraid of the pistol laughed delightedly, and the guyed elderly gentlemen good-naturedly responded in another round of applause, so grateful were they to have no shooting on the stage, and no possible terrifying accidents to their neighbors, themselves, and their respective families. “There is nothing but pulverized earth in this flower-pot,” continued the juggler, running his hand through the fine white sand, and shaking off the particles daintily, “a little too sandy to suit my views and experience in arboriculture, but we shall see--what we shall see! I plant the acorn, thus! I throw this cloth over the flower-pot, drawing it up in a peak to give air. And now, since we shall have to wait for a few moments, I shall, with your kind indulgence, beguile the tedium, in imitation of the jongleurs of eld, with a little song.”