If he had seen the mocking grins or heard the titters which his morbid fears and exaggerated sensitiveness led him to expect, he would have collapsed into gasping helplessness, and died without giving the famous curse on which the rest of the play depended. But to his intense, almost agonising relief, the eyes staring up at him were eager, excited. The people were taking him in earnest! They were not laughing at him. He had power over them; and suddenly he felt able to make use of it.
Just as Jacobus bent over him, frantically glaring, ready to prompt and swear at the same time, Loveland's frozen hesitation melted into words and gestures, the right words, the right gestures. Jacobus sighed a great sigh of thanksgiving, and Val delivered his curse with a transport of zeal. He was half frightened at his own explosiveness, but the audience enjoyed it, and when the curtain went down upon his death there was a round of applause from the audience.
"They liked it all right," said Miss Moon.
"Are they doing that for me?" Loveland asked, incredulously.
"Why, of course," she replied. "You were the star of the scene."
"It would have to be a mighty rotten Dave not to get a few hands on his curse," said Jacobus. "Never saw one yet bad enough for that. It's the scene, not the actor, they clap."
But even this cold douche did not depress Loveland. Though dead as Dave, it was his business to rise again in the third act as a young man of fashion—a youthful butterfly from an ancient chrysalis—and drunk with the sweet draught of triumph, he made the change gaily, as happy for the moment as if he were playing before an audience of kings and queens.
He had dressed, and was lurking in the wings again, watching with some interest the arrest of the leading man for his (Loveland's) murder, on false evidence snakily given by Ed Binney, when Miss de Lisle flitted noiselessly up, very insufficiently disguised as a boy.
"I suppose you do remember that you're a young English Lord?" she whispered, anxiously.
Loveland started, and stared. Had she found him out?