And as she had considerable histrionic ability, she was able to take the leading part with much credit to herself, winning enthusiastic applause from her audience. She could not have acted so cleverly had she known under whose roof she was, and what eyes were gazing on her lovely face as she entered with whole-souled spirit into her part. Charley Bonair stood apart to Berry in a little world of his own. She scarcely connected him with the millionaire senator of California, and his lovely sisters she had never seen. It was only the home of a stranger to her, this palatial house where she had come with her company to act for the pleasure of the ball guests. Life had been a whirl to Berry Vining since the night when she had been carried senseless into the company of actors, who, charmed by her exquisite beauty, had easily persuaded her to join them on the road. Gifted with much natural dramatic talent, she had quickly “caught on” to the art, and now earned a subsistence by her work. In this arduous life, too, she could more easily put from her the memory of her shattered love dream, so brief, so bitter-sweet. Yet in quiet moments it returned to vex her soul, so that she wove the beginning into a story of love and sorrow that grew and grew until her morbid fancy shaped it into a tragic romance. Meanwhile the death of the leading lady gave Berry her position, and she had a chance to act her romance on the boards of the Bonairs’ private theater. It was easy to put her heart in it so wholly that the audience seemed to her like so many lay figures, and she dreamed not that Charley Bonair’s eyes watched her, eagerly, from far back at the door, where an artificial palm half hid him from sight, while from a prominent box Rosalind Montague gazed in startled wonder, almost as if Berry had risen from the dead. For it must be the little village beauty, the coincidence was too striking to admit of a doubt. There sat the girl singing at the vine-wreathed window, just as on that September morning, when the gay cavalcade of riders went past, and Charley Bonair had turned her curly little head with his flashing glance and bow--singing, too, the same sweet lay of love and longing: “My heart with joy would thrill if you loved me, ’Twould give this life of mine its fill of ecstasy; Each golden moment spent with you on wings of Joy would flee; The sky would be a ceaseless blue if you loved me.” The gift of the roses followed next, and as Rosalind saw the fair girl in her white gown kissing the flowers, and fastening them in her hair and breast, she trembled with anger and jealousy. “The little minx! She has dared make a play out of her silly flirtation with Charley,” she thought; “she dares even to play it in his own home, hoping to meet his eyes again, but, thank Heaven, he is far enough away from here, he will never know.”