Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate.—Hamlet.
IN the room where he had assumed the dress of the part he had just played, Oswin Markham was now standing idle, and without making any attempt to remove the colour from his face or the streaks from his eyebrows. He was still in the dress of the Prince when the door was opened and a man entered the room eagerly.
“By Jingo! yes, I thought you'd see me,” he cried before he had closed the door. All the people outside—and there were a good many—who chanced to hear the tone of the voice knew that the speaker was the man who had shouted those friendly words when Oswin was leaving the stage. “Yes, old fellow,” he continued, slapping Markham on the back and grasping him by the hand, “I thought I might venture to intrude upon you. Right glad I was to see you, though, by heavens! I thought I should have shouted out when I saw you—you, of all people, here. Tell us how it comes, Oswin. How the deuce do you appear at this place? Why, what's the matter with you? Have you talked so much in that tall way on the boards that you haven't a word left to say here? You weren't used to be dumb in the good old days—-good old nights, my boy.”
“You won't give me a chance,” said Oswin; and he did not even smile in response to the other's laughter.
“There then, I've dried up,” said the stranger. “But, by my soul, I tell you I'm glad to see you. It seems to me, do you know, that I'm drunk now, and that when I sleep off the fit you'll be gone. I've fancied queer things when I've been drunk, as you well know. But it's you yourself, isn't it?”
“One need have no doubt about your identity,” said Oswin. “You talk in the same infernally muddled way that ever Harry Despard used to talk.”