And in a low voice the stranger told him that he had had a daughter, an only child, a little blond, laughing thing, whom he worshipped. She was a mere child when she fell in love. Her choice had not pleased him, and looking upon the matter as a fancy merely, he had forbidden further intercourse between the lovers. "And—and it was in the summer, and—dear God, when that yellow-haired girl was carried dead upon the stage to-night, even the grass clutched between her fingers, it was a repetition of what occurred in my country home, sir, three years ago."
Then Mr. Daly gave his arm to the old stranger, and in dead silence they walked to the hotel and parted.
Once more the play had reflected real life.
CHAPTER IV
"MISS MULTON" AT THE UNION SQUARE
Mr. Palmer had produced "Miss Multon" at the Union Square, and we were fast settling down to our steady, regular gait, having got over the false starts and breaks and nervous shyings of the opening performance, when another missive of portentous bulk reached me.
It was one of those letters in which you can find everything except an end; and the writer was one of those men whose subjects, like an unhealthy hair, always
split at the end, making at least two subjects out of one.
For instance, he started to show me the resemblance between his life and the story of the play; but when he came to mention his wife, the hair split, and instead of continuing, he branched off, to tell me she was the step-daughter of "So-and-so," that her own father, who was "Somebody," had died of "something," and had been buried "somewhere"; and then that hair split, and he proceeded to expatiate on the two fathers' qualities, and state their different business occupations, after which, out of breath, and far, far from the original subject, he had to hark back two and a half pages and tackle his life again.