While such foul days endured there was no singing at St. Paul’s, nor stage-plays anywhere, save at Blackfriars play-house, which was roofed against the weather.  And even there at last the fog crept in through cracks and crannies until the players seemed but moving shadows talking through a choking cloud; and Master Will Shakspere’s famous new piece of “Romeo and Juliet,” which had been playing to crowded houses, taking ten pound twelve the day, was fairly smothered off the boards.  Nick was eager to be out in all this blindman’s holiday; but, “Nay,” said Carew; “not so much as thy nose.  A fog like this would steal the croak from a raven’s throat, let alone the sweetness from a honey-pot like thine—­and bottom crust is the end of pie!” With which, bang went the door, creak went the key, and Carew was off to the Falcon Inn.

* * * * *

So went the winter weather, and so went Carew; for there was no denying that both had fallen into a very bad way.  Yet another change came creeping over Carew all unaware.

Nick’s face had from the first attracted him; and now, living with the boy day after day, housed up, a prisoner, yet cheerful through it all, the master-player began to feel what in a better man had been the prick of conscience, but in him was only an indefinite uneasiness like a blunted cockle-bur.  For the lad’s patient perseverance at his work, his delight in singing, and the tone of longing threaded through his voice, crept into the master-player’s heart in spite of him; and Nick’s gentle ways with Cicely touched him more than all the rest:  for if there was one thing in all the world that Gaston Carew truly loved, it was his daughter Cicely.  So for her sake, as well as for Nick’s own, the master-player came to love the lad.  And this was shown in queer ways.

In the wainscot of the dining-hall there was a carven panel just above the Spanish chest.  At night, when the house was still and all the rest asleep, Carew often came and stood before this panel, with a queer, hesitating look upon his hard, bold face; and stretching out his hand, would press upon the head of a cherub cut in the bevel edge.  Whereupon the panel slipped away within the wainscot, leaving a little closet in the hollow of the wall, in which a few strange things were stowed:  an empty flask, an inlaid rosewood box, a little slipper, and a dusty gittern with its strings all snapped and a faded ribbon tied about its neck.

The rosewood box he would take down, and with it open in his lap would sit beside the fire like a man within a dream, until the hearth grew white and cold, and the draught had blown the ashes out in streaks across the floor.  In the box was a woman’s riding-glove and a miniature upon ivory, Cicely’s mother’s face, painted at Paris in other days.

One night, while they were sitting all together by the fire, Nick and Cicely snug in the chimney-seat, Carew spoke up suddenly out of a little silence which had fallen upon them all.  “Nick,” said he, quite softly, with a look on his face as if he were thinking of other things, “I wonder if thou couldst play?”