"Thank you very much," Mrs. Shaw went on, "for offering to change, but of course Lady Wolvercote must arrange things as she likes; and, to speak frankly, I'm not particularly sorry to give the acting up, as my husband was rather upset at my not being able to go to Switzerland with him on the 28th. No, please don't trouble; I can let myself out. Good-bye, Lady Wolvercote; I hope the fair and the theatricals will be a great success. Good-bye, Mr. Fitzroy, good-bye."
Lady Wolvercote's faint remonstrances were drowned in the adieus, and Mrs. Shaw sailed out with flying colors, while Milly sank back abjectly into the seat from which she had risen. Every minute she was realizing with a more awful clearness that she, whose one appearance on the stage had been short and disastrous, was cast to play the leading part in a public play before a large and brilliant audience. She hardly heard Fitzroy's bitter remarks on Mrs. Shaw—not forgetting Jim Morrison—or Lady Wolvercote exclaiming in a voice almost dreamy with amazement:
"Really it's too extraordinary!"
"I'm very sorry Mrs. Shaw won't take the part," said Milly, clasping and unclasping her slender fingers, "for I know I can't do it myself."
Fitzroy was protesting, but she forced herself to continue: "You don't know what I'm like when I'm nervous. When we had tableaux vivants at Ascham I was supposed to be Charlotte putting a wreath on Werther's urn, and I trembled so much that I knocked the urn down. It was only card-board, so it didn't break, but every one laughed and the tableau was spoiled."
Fitzroy and his aunt cried out that that was nothing, a first appearance; any one could see she had got over that now. Pale, with terrified eyes, she looked from one to the other of her tormentors, who continued to sing the praises of her past prowess on the boards and to foretell the unprecedented harvest of laurels she would reap at Besselsfield. The higher their enthusiasm rose, the more profound became her dejection. There seemed no loop-hole for escape, unless the earth would open and swallow her, which however much to be desired was hardly to be expected.
The ting of a bicycle-bell below did not seem to promise assistance, for cyclists affected the quiet street. But it happened that this bicycle bore Ian to the door. He did not notice the coronet on the carriage which stood before it, and assumed it to belong to one of the three or four ladies in Oxford who kept such equipages. Yet in the blank state of Milly's memory, he was sorry she had not denied herself to visitors, which Mildred had already learned to do with a freedom only possible to women who are assured social success. Commonly the sight of a carriage would have sent him tiptoeing past the drawing-room, but now, vaguely uneasy, he came straight in. He looked particularly tall in the frame of the doorway, so low that his black hair almost touched the lintel; particularly handsome in the shaded, white-panelled room, into which the dark glow of his sunburned skin and brown eyes, bright with exercise, seemed to bring the light and warmth of the summer earth and sky.
Milly sprang to meet him. Lady Wolvercote was surprised to learn that this was Mrs. Stewart's husband. She had no idea a Don could be so young and good-looking. Judging of Dons solely by the slight and slighting references of her undergraduate relatives, she had imagined them to be weird-looking men, within various measurable distances of the grave.
"Lady Wolvercote and Mr. Fitzroy want me to act Galatea at the Besselsfield theatricals," said Milly, clinging to his sleeve and looking up at him with appealing eyes. "Please tell them I can't possibly do it. I'm—I'm not well enough—am I?"
"We're within three weeks of the performance, sir," put in Fitzroy. "Mrs. Stewart promised she'd do it, and we shall be in a regular fix now if she gives it up. Mrs. Shaw's chucked us already."