Just in such a strain had he delivered himself at home, and, now as then, the words earned but a cold response. "There is some secret of my father's life which is hidden from me," Evelyn said. What it could be, why it should affect her, she knew not. When he spoke of his failing health, the letter found her more sympathetic. She would have gone to him at any cost had she understood that he was really ill; but the general terms he used seemed to imply no immediate necessity ... and was there not Gavin to be considered? Indeed, this priceless gift of love now influenced every act and deed of her life. She counted the hours which should bring her news of Gavin, worshipped her own image of him upon the stage at night; wrestled unceasingly with the voices which would speak of the Etta Romney that had been; the child of passionate dreamings and of an Eastern heritage no longer. And her prayer was this, for Gavin's safety and her own salvation in his love. CHAPTER XXXI THE HOUSE AT HAMPSTEAD Evelyn had played Di Vernon's part for thirty nights exactly when just as she was going on the stage, on the evening of the thirty-first day, a call-boy put a telegram into her hand and she had scarcely opened it when she discovered that it was from her father. "I am passing through London upon my way to Paris," it said; "perhaps I shall be in the theatre. If not, come to me afterwards to De Kyser's Hotel. I will engage a room for you there." She told the boy that there was no answer to the message and immediately passed to the garden scene she had played so often and always with such sweetness and light. The thought that her father might be in the house excited her strangely. Difficult as it is for a player upon the stage to identify those in the stalls, she peered intently, nevertheless, at the serried ranks before her and was conscious of a sense of disappointment when her search was vain. A second thought suggested that her father might be hidden by the curtains of a private box; and with this in her mind she found herself playing, not, as it were, to an audience of strangers, but to one who loved her and had never understood her. Surely her father would read something of her own story, of her loyalty to her old home, and the depth of feeling which had sent her from it when he listened to Di Vernon and her sweet sincerity. This was her hope, though she knew not whether the Earl were present or no. To her anxious questions during the _entractes_, old Jacobs, the stage-door keeper, declared that no one "hadn't come round from the front not since he'd drunk his supper beer"--a vague answer, insomuch as the beer in question made its appearance at six o'clock and continued to do so at short intervals until eleven.