CHAPTER II.
BEHIND THE SCENES.
James Penwyn and Maurice Clissold went to the Eborsham Theatre as soon as they had eaten their dinner and smoked a single cigar apiece, lounging by the open window in the gloaming, talking over their afternoon's adventure.
'What a fellow you are, Jim!' cried Maurice, with a half-contemptuous, half-compassionate air, as for the foolishness of a child. 'To hear you go on about that scarecrow of a girl, one would suppose you had never seen a pretty woman in your life.'
'I never saw prettier eyes,' said James, 'and she has a manner that a fellow might easily fall in love with—so simple, so childish, so confiding.'
'Which means that she gazed with undisguised admiration upon the magnificent Squire Penwyn, of Penwyn Manor. A woman need only flatter you, Jim, for you to think her a Venus.'
'That poor little thing didn't flatter me. She's a great deal too innocent.'
'No, she only admired you innocently; opening those big blue eyes of hers to their widest in a gaze of rapture. Was it the locket, or the studs, or the moustache, I wonder, that struck her most?'