A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.
“Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.”—Dryden.
It was after a matinée performance at —— Hall some two weeks ago that I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.
“There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming out?”
“A woman!” exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt to be of the gentler sex.
“Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could not get rid of her no how.”
I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering against the wall by the door. “Well, my good woman, what do you want?” I asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the face she held partly concealed from me.
“Are you Mr. Mandeville?” she inquired in a tone shaken as much by agitation as age.
I bowed.