knew, to the first school of dramatic art in Europe—­to the school which keeps alive from generation to generation the excellence and fame of the best French drama.  He came to estimate by degrees all that she had done; he saw also all she had still to do.  In the spring she had been an actress without a future, condemned by the inexorable logic of things to see her fame desert her with the first withering of her beauty.  Now she had, as it were, but started towards her rightful goal, but her feet were in the great high-road, and Kendal saw before her, if she had but strength to reach it, the very highest summit of artistic success.

The end of the first act was reached; Elvira, returning from the performance of the marriage ceremony in the chapel of the palace, had emerged hand-in-hand with her husband, and, followed by her wedding train, upon the great hall.  She had caught sight of Macias standing blanched and tottering under the weight of the incredible news which had just been given to him by the Duke.  She had flung away the hateful hand which held her, and, with a cry, instinct with the sharp and terrible despair of youth, she had thrown herself at the feet of her lover.

When the curtain fell, Edward Wallace could have had few doubts—­if he had ever cherished any—­of the success of his play.  He himself escaped behind the scenes as soon as Miss Bretherton’s last recall was over, and the box was filled in his absence with a stream of friends, and a constant murmur of congratulation, which was music in the ears of Madame de Chateauvieux, and, for the moment, silenced in Kendal his own throbbing and desolate consciousness.

‘There never was a holiday turned to such good account before,’ a gray-haired dramatic critic was saying to her, a man with whose keen, good-natured face London had been familiar for the last twenty years.  ’What magic has touched the beauty, Madame de Chateauvieux?  Last spring we all felt as though one fairy godmother at least had been left out at the christening.  And now it would seem as though even she had repented of it, and brought her gift with the rest.  Well, well, I always felt there was something at the bottom in that nature that might blossom yet.  Most people who are younger at the trade than I would not hear of it.  It was commonly agreed that her success would last just as long as the first freshness of her beauty, and no more.  And now—­the English stage has laid its hold at last upon a great actress.’

Madame de Chateauvieux’s smiling reply was broken by the reappearance of Wallace, round whom the buzz of congratulation closed with fresh vigour.

‘How is she?’ asked Madame de Chateauvieux, laying a hand on his arm.  ‘Tired?’

’Not the least!  But, of course, all the strain is to come.  It is amazing, you know, this reception.  It’s almost more trying than the acting.  Forbes in the wings, looking on, is a play in himself!’

In another minute the hubbub had swept out again, and the house had settled into silence.