Then, when the curtain rose, and her companion returned to his own chair, Marion forgot the gay crowd, forgot past, present, and future. Leaning on the edge of the box, utterly unconscious of the fact that Lady Fairfax's 'little niece' in a white muslin dress and with a rose in her hair, was being fully as much regarded as the stage, she gave herself up to the pleasure of her first play. She did not know that her laugh rose here and there the first in the house; she was totally unaware of the horror in her face when the villain of the piece unmasked his villainy. When a duel came to be fought, and swords gleamed out, she half turned and grasped Sir John's sleeve, not daring to see the blades clash. And when the curtain fell, she needed the positive assurance of her uncle and Colonel Sampson (Lady Fairfax being at the door of the box, smilingly and inexorably keeping visitors without) that the men lying there on the stage were not really dead.
CHAPTER VII
SIMONE LEBLANC
Marion was silent in the carriage on her way home from the theatre, and absent-minded at supper. Her aunt presently thought it wise to switch off her thoughts into another channel.
'She will never sleep, that precious baby,' she said in an aside to Colonel Sampson, sitting at her right hand. 'She is living the acts all over again. I cannot blame her. I wept all night after my first play.'
Soon Marion's ears pricked at the sound of the word Garth; mentally she rubbed her eyes and sat up. Colonel Sampson was talking of her father—telling the sort of tales Marion had so often heard when her father and his old friends of the sea met at the friendly board, or when he had fallen back on the parson for audience. And as Mr. Sampson talked, it seemed to Marion that the bored gentleman of fashion completely disappeared and the stern, honest soldier came uppermost.
Marion listened with complacent pride to the hints the speaker gave of her father's bravery and lovable little deeds.
'He was ever prone to acts of generous folly,' the Admiral's sister put in at the end of one of the stories. 'And that reminds me, my dear,' turning to her niece, 'I haven't yet heard one hundredth part of your news from home——'
'You lead such a busy life, Aunt Constance,' put in Marion demurely, 'I don't see how you can ever think of little things like stories about Garth.'
'I lead a most unhappy life!' retorted the lady, 'and I hope when some one writes my memoirs he will be careful to add the fact that I bore my trials right sweetly. But I was going to say—give her some more of that jelly, John—I never had the right story of how your foolish father came to saddle himself with the little French girl.'