Meanwhile, behind the scenes the greatest excitement prevailed. There had never been a Juliet like her, they were declaring; and they prophesied a success in London which should even eclipse that of Barton!
And Doris, looking pale, stood smiling dreamily through it all. Even while Jeffrey paced to and fro in her dressing-room, too excited for speech, she remained calm and serene, wrapt in a kind of spiritual veil.
Managers, actors, thronged round her with congratulations; even the old dresser, declared, with tears, that “nothing had been seen like it.”
At last, the porter announced that Miss Marlowe’s fly was waiting, and Jeffrey took her away from the excited crowd.
“Draw your cloak well round your throat,” he said, as anxiously as if she were so fragile that a breath of wind would sweep her away. “Give me those violets to hold for you,” he said.
She drew her hand back, almost with a gesture of dread, and a dash of color came flying into her pale face.
“No, no—I can manage, thanks,” she said, quickly. “How sweet they smell, do they not?” and she held them up to him for a second.
“Yes,” he said, absently. “Were they thrown with the rest?”
“Yes,” she said, in a low voice.
“Some one of the poor people in the pit, I daresay,” he said; “a graceful and spontaneous tribute, worth, I was going to say, all the rest of them, beautiful and costly though some of the bouquets are. But I daresay you don’t agree with me?” and he smiled.