“Mr. Gogo!” I exclaimed.
“Ay, Mistress Una,” said he, “you’re all pretty players, from miss to my lady dowager. Don’t tell me. You all love to excite the emotions you don’t understand, and then off with you from the stage, sweet ethereals, to the suppers of steak and porter which you do, while Jack and my lord are wetting their pillows with tears over your sensibility.”
“Thank you,” I said, rising, highly offended. “As I, for one, am not playing to be hooked, I’ll take your warning in time.”
I had expected de Crespigny to strike in, in angry protest over his servant’s insolence; but, to my astonishment, he did not move or interfere. A little pregnant silence ensued, and the tears were already rising to my eyes, when, to my horror, I heard madam’s voice at the door.
“De Crespigny,” she said, “may I come in for once?”
He stumbled to his feet, and stood paralysed a moment, before he answered—
“A minute. You know the conditions: I must hide it away, and then”—
When she entered a little later, there was he standing to receive her with a spasmodic grin; his easel was empty, Gogo pounded at his mortar, and I—I was shrunk behind the curtain, peeping in a very shiver of terror.
She looked at him with a little shaky propitiating smile. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. She tried to speak, and could not. He understood so far, the poor clown, and bade his servant withdraw. When they were alone, she turned upon him with a little appealing motion of her hands.
“Am I never to be allowed to see it?” she asked.