He suddenly stopped talking—­stammered—­looked again.  They were two girls, one evidently a good deal older than the other.  The elder was talking with the assistant stage-manager.  The younger stood quietly, a few yards away, not talking to any one.  Her eyes were on Fenwick, and her young, slightly frowning face wore an expression of amusement—­of something besides, also—­something puzzled and intent.  It flashed upon him that she had been there for some time, that he had been vaguely conscious of her—­that she had, in fact, been watching from a distance the angry scene in which he had been engaged.

‘Why!—­whatever is the matter, Mr. Fenwick?’ said the actor beside him, startled by his look.

Fenwick made no answer, but he dropped a roll of papers he was holding and suddenly rushed forward across the stage, through the throng of carpenters and scene-shifters who were at work upon it.  Some garden steps and a fountain just being drawn into position came in his way; he stumbled and fell, was conscious of two or three men coming to his assistance, rose again, and ran on, blindly, pushing at the groups in his way, till he ran into the arms of the stage-manager.

‘Who were those ladies?—­where are they?’ he said, panting, and looking round him in despair; for they had vanished, and the stage-entrance was blocked by an outgoing stream of people.

‘Don’t know anything about them,’ said the man, sulkily.  Fenwick had been the plague of his life in rehearsals.  ’What?—­you mean those two girls?  Never saw ’em before.’

‘But you must know who they are—­you must!’ shouted Fenwick.  ’What’s their name?  Why did you let them go?’

‘Because I had finished with them.’

The manager turned on his heel, and was about to give an order to a workman, when Fenwick caught him by the arm.

‘I implore you,’ he said, in a shaking voice, his face crimson—­’tell me who they are—­and where they went.’

The man looked at him astonished, but something in the artist’s face made him speak more considerately.

’I am extremely sorry, Mr. Fenwick, but I really know nothing about them.  Oh, by the way’—­he fumbled in his pocket.  ’Yes—­one of them did give me a card—­I forgot—­I never saw the name before.’  He extracted it with difficulty and handed it to Fenwick, who stood trembling from head to foot.

Fenwick looked at it.

‘Miss Larose.’  Nothing else.  No address.

‘But the other one!—­the other one!’ he said, beside himself.

‘I never spoke to her at all,’ said his companion, whose name was Fison.  ’They came in here twenty minutes ago and asked to see me.  The door-keeper told them the rehearsal was just over and they would find me on the stage.  The lady I was talking to wished to know whether we had all the people we wanted for the ballroom scene.  Some friend with whom she had been acting in the country had advised her to apply—­’