I never learned who had sent it; some one, probably, from amongst the few friends I could still number in that wicked household. It had been handed in at the stage door by a messenger, and that was all I could discover. The lights of my triumph were darkened. I knew myself at last hunted—and alone. Why had I not bid my monster wait for me? But it were idle now to moan. Despair gave me readiness. I finished my part quite brilliantly, without a stumble, and chatted gaily, while disrobing, with the poor pretty little coryphée who was my chief friend in the dressing-rooms. By one pretext or another I detained her until we were alone. Then, “Fanny,” I said, “keep mum; but I think it unlikely I shall come here again.”
She looked at me with her large grey eyes. We were much of a figure, and not unlike in features.
“O, Miss Rush!” she whispered. “And I’d ’oped always to ’ave you for a friend.”
“So you shall, Fanny,” I said: “but there are contingencies—you understand?”
Her lip was trembling. I think she wanted to tell me to keep good.
“And so,” I said hastily, “as I have liked you so, I want to exchange little presents with you, as a remembrance, if you will.”
The poor child had often cast admiring eyes on a calash which it was my habit to wear to the theatre, and which was indeed a very becoming thing of crimson velvet and cherry-coloured lining, with a frame of costly fur to the face. It had been given me by Bob, and certainly nothing short of my present desperation would have brought me to part with it; but it was, more than anything I wore of late, associated with me; and necessity has no conscience.
Fanny’s eyes sparkled against her will, as I held the thing out to her.
“O no, miss!” she entreated; “it’s too good for me, and I can’t give you nothing the same in exchange.”
“You shall give me your neckerchief,” I said; and, cutting the discussion short, drove her away at length, with her pretty face in the hood, and tears in her eyes.