"Take my life, but spare my moustaches!" cried Mary, in tragic tones. "Certainly though, Mr. Wilmot, you are right; Modus ought not to be seen with the characteristic 'musk-toshes,' as nurse calls them; of an English officer. What is to be done?"
"Please, sir, will you come? Major Vaughan says the group is agoing to be set for the first scene, and you are wanted, sir," was a flunkey's admonition to Fane, who went off accordingly, after advising me to add a dishevelled beard to my tenderly cared-for moustaches, which would seem as if Modus had entirely neglected his toilette.
There was a general rush for part books, a general cry for things that were not forthcoming, and a general despair on the parts of the youngest amateurs at forgetting their cues just when they were most wanted.
Fane, when he came off the stage after the first scene, leant against a pillar to watch the pretty one between Julia and Helen, so near that he must have been seen by the audience, and presented a most handsome and interesting spectacle, I dare say, for young ladies to gaze at. Fixing his eyes on Florence, whose rendering of the part was really perfect as she uttered these words, "Helen, I'm constancy!" he unconsciously muttered aloud, "I believe it!"
"So do I!" I could not help saying, "and therefore more shame to whoever wins such a heart to throw it away. 'Beneath her feet, a duke—a duke might lay his coronet!'" I quoted.
"Are you in love yourself, Fred?" laughed the captain; then, stroking his moustaches thoughtfully for some minutes, he said at last, as if with an effort, "You are right, young one, and yet——"
If I was right, what need was there for him to throw such passion into his part—what need was there for him to say with such empressement those words:
A willing pupil kneels to thee,
And lays his title and his fortune at thy feet?
If he intended to go into foreign service, why did he not go at once? Though I confess it seemed strange to me why Fane—the courted, the flattered, the admired Fane—should wish to leave England.
Reader, mind, the gallant captain is a desperate flirt, and I do not believe he will go into foreign service any more than I shall, but I am afraid he will win that poor girl's heart with far less thought than you buy your last "little darling French bonnet," and when he is tired of it will throw it away with quite as little heed. But I was not so much interested in his flirtation as to forget my own, still I was obliged to confess that Mary Aspeden did not pay me as much attention as I should have wished.