Barlow.  What did I say?

Mrs. Perkins.  Nepotic.

Barlow.  How stupid of me!  I’ll begin again.

Mrs. Perkins (desperately).  Oh, pray don’t.  Go on from where you left off.  That’s a fearfully long aside, anyhow, and I go nearly crazy every time you say it.  I don’t know what to do with myself.  It’s easy enough for Mr. Yardsley to say occupy yourself somehow, but what I want to know is, how?  I can’t look inquiringly at you all that time, waiting for you to say “Ireland!  Oh, yes—­yes—­just over from Dublin.”  I can’t lean against the mantel-piece and gaze into the fire, because the mantel-piece is only canvas, and would fall down if I did.

Barlow.  It’s a long aside, Mrs. Perkins, but it’s awfully important, and I don’t see how we can cut it down.  It’s really the turning-point of the play, in which I reveal the true state of affairs to the audience.

Mrs. Perkins (with a sigh).  I suppose that’s true.  I’ll have to stand it.  But can’t I be doing some sewing?

Barlow.  Certainly not.  You are the daughter of a peer.  They never sew.  You might be playing a piano, but there’s hardly room on the stage for that, and, besides, it would interfere with my aside, which needs a hush to be made impressive.  Where did I leave off?

Mrs. Perkins.  Hypnotic power.

Barlow.  Oh yes. (Resumes rehearsing.) She little wots that this—­ this adventurer who has so strangely interested her with his hypnotic power is the man who twenty years ago forged her father’s name to the title-deeds of Burnington, drove him to his ruin, and subsequently, through a likeness so like as to bewilder and confuse even a mother’s eyes, has forced the rightful Earl of Puddingford out into a cruel world, to live and starve as Henry Cobb.

[Bell.

Mrs. Perkins.  Ah, I fancy the Bradleys are here at last.  I do hope
Edward knows his part.

Enter Yardsley.

Yardsley.  They’ve come, and we can begin at last.

Enter Perkins, Miss Andrews, and Mr. and Mrs. Bradley.

Mrs. Perkins.  Take off your things, Emma.  Let me take your cloak,
Dorothy.  Does Edward feel equal—­

Mrs. Bradley.  He says so.  Knows it word for word, he says, though
I’ve been so busy with my own—­[They go out talking.

Yardsley.  Well, Brad, how goes it?  Know your part?

Bradley.  Like a book.  Bully part, too.

Barlow.  Glad you like it.

Bradley.  Can’t help liking it; it’s immense!  Particularly where I acquaint the heroine with the villany that—­

Barlow.  You?  Why—­

Enter Mrs. Bradley, Miss Andrews, and Mrs. Perkins.

Mrs. Perkins (to Bradley).  So glad you’re going to play with us.

Bradley.  So am I. It’s a great pleasure.  Felt rather out in the cold until—­

Barlow.  But, I say, Brad, you don’t—­