“Very well,” said Sir Matthew, “then do that instead. Fraulein Ellerbeck, will you take tickets for them?--and the sooner the better, for I hear there has been a great run on the seats there since the announcement of Miss Greville’s marriage. She’s to marry Sir Roderick Fenchurch at the end of the season.” Ralph and Evereld having poured forth delighted thanks, discreetly kept silence when the conversation turned on Miss Greville’s betrothal. “They say, you know,” said Janet, “that it is a great surprise to every one, and that it was always supposed she would marry Macneillie.” And in response to this every one had something to say about the probability or the improbability of such a story, save the two children who, with a proud pleasure in feeling that Macneillie’s secret was safe in their keeping, went on eating bacon with the most absolute control of countenance. When the eagerly awaited day at length arrived and the two hero-worshippers were sitting in bliss at the theatre, they found some difficulty at first in recognising Macneillie. He was just the Danish prince and no one else. It was only when both hero and heroine were called before the curtain, that they could at all think of him as the same man they had seen a few weeks before in St. James’ Park. As he led forward Miss Greville the contrast between them was curiously marked. She, with her smiling face, her air of perfect ease and content, seemed thoroughly to enjoy the warm reception. He, on the other hand, merely bowed mechanically, and looked as if this interlude were highly distasteful to him; the children could have fancied that he was positively nervous, though they doubted whether an experienced actor could really know what nervousness meant. After that call before the curtain they lost the sense that _Hamlet_ himself was actually present; always through the passionate scenes and the tragic death which followed, it was not entirely _Hamlet_, but Macneillie with his own personal troubles that they saw; they wondered much how he could get through his part, and more and more after that day his name continually recurred in their talk, in their games, and even in their prayers. Just at the close of the season they saw him once again. Fraulein Ellerbeck had promised that on the first fine Saturday they should go to Richmond Park, taking their lunch with them. They had learnt from the conversation of their elders at the breakfast table that it was the very day on which Miss Christine Greville was to marry Sir Roderick Fenchurch. The marriage was to take place at a small country church, and was to be of a strictly private character. They had talked of it more than once as they sat at lunch under the trees in the park, and early in the afternoon as they wandered along the quiet paths and watched the deer grazing peacefully, their minds were full of their hero and his trouble. Suddenly Evereld gripped hold of her companion’s arm.