A film came slowly over the eyes of Miss Anstruther. ‘You are not joking, Mr Vallance?’
‘The matter is too serious for jesting. But I will break a confidence. He loves you. He told me so half an hour ago.’
The heiress could scarcely forbear a smile, as she reflected that her ears had drunk in the soft confession only five minutes ago. ‘Mr Vallance, will you do me a favour? Will you ask Mr Stanley to step here for a few minutes? But remember, you must on no account reveal my identity.’
‘You may rely upon me, Miss Anstruther. I do not know what steps you mean to adopt; but there is no time to lose, for old Colonel Stanley is in front, and will, if he has recognised you, at once inform his son.’
‘That is my fear; so haste.’
Almost before the heiress could mature her plans, the rejected one appeared before her. He was very grave, and bowed with an air of deep humility, as the actress thus addressed him: ‘Mr Vallance and I are old acquaintances, so I commissioned him to ask you to return for a short time. I feel very anxious about our scenes in the Hunchback to-morrow. Would you mind running through the Modus and Helen scenes? I mean the second one.’
Montmorency bowed. ‘With pleasure.’
It would have been a lesson for half the actresses on the stage, could they have beheld the manner in which the saucy coquette of the play coaxed her lover, lured him on, fascinated him, and enveloped him in such a spell of witcheries, that no Modus that ever breathed could have been proof against her seductive wiles. The scene came to an unexpected termination, for Montmorency suddenly caught her in his arms, and as he held her clasped tight to his breast, exclaimed in rapid and excited tones: ‘This is not acting! If it be, you are the greatest actress that ever trod the boards. You love me! I see it in your sparkling eye; I read it in your blushing cheek! Say, am I not right?’
Emily Anstruther remained perfectly passive in the arms of Harry Stanley, as she murmured ‘Yes!’
The enraptured couple were so completely absorbed in reading love in each other’s eyes, that they had not observed the entrance of two gentlemen, Colonel Stanley and Mr Vallance.