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Swetenham could understand and sympathize with him in that. Dick managed to convey the information that he was staying on to Mabel during the third act. She looked a little astonished; Dick, in the old days, had been so scornful about young men's stage amusements. Anyway, it did not affect the party very much, for Mrs. Grant and Mr. Jarvis had already gone home, and Mabel was giving Dr.
She walked between the two men, a hand on each of them. Joan walked the further side of Swetenham, and Dick had no chance of seeing her even, but he knew that she was very silent, and, he could gather, depressed. At supper, which they had served in a little private room, and over the champagne, she won back to a certain hilarity of spirit.
"Go, sir," Charles is reported to have said to one of his prisoners, Captain Swetenham, "go and tell your general that Charles Stuart is coming to give him battle." That clement of the theatrical which has always hung about the Stuart cause, and which has in so large a degree given it its abiding charm, was here amply present.
Swetenham had purchased a stack of programmes and was pointing out the stars on the list to the youngest Miss Bevis. The back of the hall was rapidly filling, and one or two other parties strolled into the stalls. The orchestra had already commenced to play the overture rather shakily. "Music, and bad music at that," groaned Dick inwardly.
I give up everything everything. They were advancing across a wide lawn. The Ambassador and Mrs. Swetenham were coming to meet them. The Ambassador, weary of his companion, was looking with pleasure at the two approaching figures, at the sweep of Eleanor's white dress upon the grass, and the frame made by her black lace parasol for the delicacy of her head and neck.
"He's there," Fanny told her, "third from centre in the second row. Young Swetenham is with him, but none of the women folk, praise be to heaven. Have you asked him to the supper afterwards?" "No," Joan admitted, "and, Fanny, if it could possibly be arranged and Brown would not be very hurt, would it matter if I did not come myself? I feel so much more like going home to bed."
Jarvis asking young Swetenham if he knew anything of the company and what it was like. "Rather," the youth answered, "been twice myself this time already. They are real good for travellers. Some jolly pretty girls among them." "Musical comedy, isn't it?" Mrs. Bevis asked. "Dorothy has always so wanted to see The Merry Widow."
"Come on," Swetenham whispered to Dick; "Fanny is a caution, she doesn't mind a bit what sort of state you see her in." The boy led them up the stairs, through a small door and across what was evidently the back of the stage. At the foot of some steps on the further side he came to pause outside a door on which he knocked violently. "Come in," Fanny's voice shrilled from inside; "don't mind us."
Fanny had come back from her drive with Swetenham full of exciting information to give Joan about "the new victim," as she would call Dick. "Do you know, honey," she confided, waking Joan out of a well simulated slumber, "I believe he is the same young man as was so taken with you that evening in the Strand. You remember the day we spent in town? It is love at first sight, that is what it is.
Young Sockie" that was her name for Swetenham, invented because of his gorgeous socks "tells me he has never seen a chap so bowled over as the new victim was by your dancing, and he asked to be brought round and introduced. Did you catch him staring at you all through the dinner, and, honey, did he try to kiss you when he brought you home?"
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