"Yes, what is it?"
"Here's the di'monds," said Huddesley, presenting the box, done up for the sake of stage-effect in a rather large and lumbering parcel. "I've been carrying 'em around like you told me to, so they'd be safe. I didn't want to give 'em to hanybody but you, and I've got to go now. You know I don't have to show again, except where Mr. Taylor comes in and sees me in the mirror, and plugs me over with the pistol-shot, and then they drag me out from behind the screen. And I thought anybody could put on the clothes for that, as long as the audience don't see anything but just a body——"
"Yes, but what's the matter? Why can't you finish?" asked Mazie, a little startled. She took the box mechanically, and edged toward her room.
"If you please, ma'am, I ain't feelin' very well. I think maybe it's the wet cold night. It's just come over me—I've got a kind of bad turn on the stomach and——"
"Oh, I'm so sorry," interrupted Mazie, fearful from his manner that Huddesley was about to enter on some embarrassing details. "Better go down and ask my father for some whisky—he's in the dining-room—tell him I sent you. But what shall we do—oh, Mr. Carson?"
The enslaved Chorus, who figured in a small part in "Mrs. Tankerville," approached; he was always hanging around whenever Mazie went on or left the stage, in hopes of a word. But the girl now saw him, to her surprise, in overcoat and hat.
"You're not going?" she asked, with a pang of regret; she wished, momentarily, that she had been "nicer" to him. Whether a woman cares for a man or not, she never sees him leave her without dismay. "You're not going?" said Mazie, directing a troubled and wistful smile upon him.
"Can't help it, Miss Pallinder," said Bob, warming to the very marrow at her glance. "I—I hate to awfully. But it's getting late, you know, and I've got to meet my sister; her train will be in about midnight."
"Oh, it's not that yet."
"Pretty near."