"Oh, Nora! don't say that," Daisy urged. "The pictures are almost over now; and then we shall have supper."
"I don't want supper! I only wanted to be Queen Esther; and you said I might. It was the prettiest picture of the whole lot."
"But I couldn't help it, Nora."
"I could have done it just as well as Theresa! She didn't look handsome a bit."
"Oh, Nora, I think she did for a picture."
"She didn't a bit; the things she had on looked handsome."
Daisy was called away. Her last dressing was to be done now, and the one of which Daisy was most doubtful. She was to stand for the angel in the "Game of Life." Other people had no doubt about it. Mrs. Sandford was sure that the angel's wings would make a good representation, which Daisy was slow to believe; near by, they looked so very like gauze and pasteboard! They were arranged, at any rate, to appear as if they grew out of her shoulders; she was arrayed in flowing white draperies over her own little cambrick frock; and then she was ready. Hamilton came in. He was to be the young man in the picture. Daisy liked his appearance well. But when Preston followed him, she felt unspeakably shocked. Preston was well got up, in one respect; he looked frightful. He wore a black mask, ugly but not grotesque; and his whole figure was more like the devil in the picture than Daisy had imagined it could be. She did not like the whole business at all. There was no getting out of it now; the picture must be given; so the performers were placed.
Hamilton and Preston sat on two sides of a chess-board, and behind them the little angel stood watching the game. Mrs. Sandford was right. By a skilful placing and shielding of the lamps, the lights were thrown broadly where they ought to be, on faces and draperies, leaving the gauze wings of the angel in such obscurity that they just showed as it was desired they should. The effect was extremely good, and even artistic. The little angel herself was not in full light; it was through a shade of gloom that her grave face of concern looked down upon the game on the chess-board. Truly Daisy looked concerned and grave. She thought she did not like to play such things as this, One of the figures below her was so very wicked and devilish in its look; and Hamilton leaned over the pieces on the board with so well-given an expression of doubt and perplexity, his adversary's watch was so intent, and the meaning of the whole was so sorrowfully deep; that Daisy gazed unconsciously most like a guardian angel who might see with sorrow the evil one getting the better over a soul of his care. For it was real to Daisy. She knew that the devil does in truth try to bewitch and wile people out of doing right into doing wrong. She knew that he tries to get the mastery of them; that he rejoices every time he sees them make a "false move;" that he is a great cunning enemy, all the worse because we cannot see him, striving to draw people to their ruin; and she thought that it was far too serious and dreadful a thing to be made a play of. She wondered if guardian angels did really watch over poor tempted souls and try to help them. And all this brought upon Daisy's face a shade of awe, and sorrow, and fear, which was strangely in keeping with her character as an angel, and very singular in its effect on the picture. The expressions of pleasure and admiration which had burst from the company in the drawing-room at the first sight of it, gradually stilled and ceased; and it was amid a profound and curious silence and hush that the curtain was at length drawn upon the picture. There were some people among the spectators not altogether satisfied in their minds.
"How remarkable!" was the first word that came from anybody's lips in the darkened drawing-room.
"Very remarkable!" somebody else said. "Did you ever see such acting?"