NELL PREVENTS A QUARREL.
Strings would have followed her and insisted upon her taking back the beautiful gift, but Nell was gone in an instant and her door closed.
“To cut their teeth on!” he repeated as he placed the jewelled ring wonderingly upon his bow-finger and watched it sparkle and laugh in the light as he pretended to play a tune. “She is always joking like that; Heaven reward her.”
He stood lost in the realization of sudden affluence.
Buckingham entered the room from the stage-door. His eyes were full of excitement. “The audience are wild over Nell, simply wild,” he exclaimed in his enthusiasm, unconscious of the fact that he had an auditor, who was equally oblivious of his lordship’s presence. “Gad,” he continued, rapturously, half aloud, half to himself, “when they are stumbling home through London fog, the great comédienne will be playing o’er the love-scenes with Buckingham in a cosy corner of an inn. She will not dare deny my bid to supper, with all her impudence. Un petit souper!” He broke into a laugh. “Tis well Old Rowley was too engaged to look twice at Nelly’s eyes,” he thought. “His Majesty shall never meet the wench at arm’s length, an I can help it.”
He observed or rather became aware for the first time that there was another occupant of the room.
“Ah, sirrah,” he called, without noting the character of his companion, “inform Mistress Nell, Buckingham is waiting.”
Strings looked up. He seemed to have grown a foot in contemplation of his sudden wealth. Indeed, each particular tatter on his back seemed to have assumed an independent air.