She followed the tragedy intensely
The lines of the different characters seemed branded upon her brain, and she remembered them without effort and knew them quite by heart. Sometimes Darby, struggling with the distressing complications of his detested dress, would hesitate over some word or break a sentence, thereby marring the perfect beauty of it, and while Sherwood would smile and shrug his shoulders lightly as though as to say, "Have I not enough to put up with, that thou art what thou art, but thou must need'st bungle the words!" Then would Debora clench her hands and tap her little foot against the soft rugs.
"Oh! I would I had but the chance to speak his lines," she said to herself at such times. "Prithee 'twould be in different fashion! 'Tis not his fault, in sooth, for no living man could quite understand or say the words as they should be said, but none the less it doth sorely try my patience."
So the enchanted hours passed and none came to disturb the girl, or discover her till the last morning, which was Saturday. The rehearsal had ended, and Debora was waiting for Darby. The theatre looked gray and deserted. At the back of the stage the great velvet traverses through which the actors made their exits and entrances, hung in dark folds, sombre as the folds of a pall. A chill struck to her heart, for she seemed to be the only living thing in the building, and Darby did not come.
She grew at last undecided whether to wait longer or risk going across the river, and so home alone, when a quick step came echoing along the passage that led to the box. In a moment a man had gathered back the hangings and entered. He started when he saw the slight figure standing in the uncertain light, then took a step towards her.
The girl did not move but looked up into his face with an expression of quick, glad recognition, then she leaned a little towards him and smiled. "Romeo!" she exclaimed softly. "Romeo!" and as though compelled to it by some strange impulse, followed his name with the question that has so much of pathos, "Wherefore," she said, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
The man laughed a little as he let the curtains drop behind him.
"Why, an' I be Romeo," he answered in that rare voice of his, full and sweet as a golden bell, "then who art thou? Art not Juliet? Nay, pardon me, mademoiselle," his tone changing, "I know whom thou art beyond question, by thy likeness to Thornbury. 'Fore Heaven! 'tis a very singular likeness, and thou must be, in truth, his sister. I would ask your grace for coming in with such scant announcement. I thought the box empty. The young Duke of Nottingham lost a jewelled pin here yestere'en—or fancied so—and sent word to me to have the place searched. Ah! there it is glittering above you in the tassel to the right."
"I have seen naught but the stage," she said, "and now await my brother. Peradventure he did wrong to bring me here, but I so desired to see the play that I persuaded and teased him withal till he could no longer deny me. 'Twas not over-pleasant being hidden i' the box, but 'twas the only way Darby would hear of. Moreover," with a little proud gesture, "I have the greater interest in this new tragedy that I be well acquainted with Master William Shakespeare himself."
"That is to be fortunate indeed," Sherwood answered, looking into her eyes, "and I fancy thou could'st have but little difficulty in persuading a man to anything. I hold small blame for Thornbury."