“Her mother!” said the little lady, with a dazzling flash of eyes and teeth. “How stupid you were not to guess it before!”
“I’ve said nothing, madam, that I should not, I trust,” remarked Gerry, with quite a seventeenth-century manner. “And, therefore, when I entreat you to allow me an interview with your daughter, I trust you will not refuse to grant my—my prayer.”
“Hear the boy!” cried the little woman, with a trill of laughter, as the cab pulled up before a large lighted house in a large darkish square. “Well,” she added, “I think I can promise you that Lottie will see you at least for a minute or two to-morrow. Not here—at the theater, seven o’clock sharp. Lend me a pencil and one of your cards.” She scribbled a word or two on the bit of pasteboard, paid the cab in spite of Gerry’s protestations, and ran lightly up the solemn doorsteps, turned to the enraptured young man standing, hat in hand, below, waved her hand, plunged a Yale key into the keyhole—and instantly vanished from view.
Behind Gerry’s shirt-front throbbed tumultuous delight. To have driven in a cab with her mother—talked of her, told his tale of love—albeit with interruptions—and won the promise of an interview at seven sharp upon the morrow.... Unprecedented fortune! incomparable luck! Did Time itself cease he would not fail to keep the tryst with punctuality. He caught a passing cab, drove home to his Piccadilly chambers, and went to bed so blissfully happy that he spent a wretchedly bad night. The card he kept beneath his pillow; and true to the promise made by the mother of the enchantress of his soul—when, punctually to the stroke of seven, Gerry, dressed with the most excruciating care, and clammy with repressed emotion, presented himself at the stage door of the Levity—the scrawled hieroglyphics on the blessed piece of pasteboard admitted him behind the scenes. Led by a smartly-aproned maid, he climbed stairs, he crossed the stage, was jostled by baize-aproned men in paper caps, and begged their pardon. He followed his guide down a short passage, fell up three steps—and knocked with his burning brow against the door—her door! A voice he knew said, “Come in!” and in he went, to find, not the adored, the worshiped Lottie, but the little plainish lady of the previous night, sitting at a lace-veiled dressing-table, attired in a Japanese gown.
“Oh, I say!” murmured Gerry.
“Ah! there you are!” The little lady looked at him over her shoulder, and nodded kindly. “Don’t be too disappointed at not finding Lottie here,” she said cheerfully; “she won’t be long.”
“I’m so awfully obliged for all your kindness,” said Gerry, sheepishly smiling over a giant bouquet.
“You shall be really grateful to me one of these days, I promise you,” said the little lady. “Let my maid take that haysta—that bouquet, and sit down, do!”
Gerry took the indicated chair beside the dressing-table, and noted, as he sucked the top of his stick, how pitilessly the relentless radiance of the electric light accentuated the worn lines of the little lady’s face and the gray streaks in her still soft and pretty brown hair.
“Cheer up!” she said, turning one of her flashing smiles upon him as he sadly sucked his stick. “You won’t have long to wait for Lottie!”