The two walked in silence for a few moments, when MacLean spoke again:  “He drank to her.  At the last, when this lady had been toasted, and that, he rose and drank to ‘Audrey,’ and threw his wineglass over his shoulder.  He hath done what he could.  The world knows that he loves her honorably, seeks her vainly in marriage.  Something more I know.  He gathered the company together last evening that, as his guests, the highest officers, the finest gentlemen of the colony, should go with him to the theatre to see her for the first time as a player.  Being what they were, and his guests, and his passion known, he would insure for her, did she well or did she ill, order, interest, decent applause.”  MacLean broke off with a short, excited laugh.  “It was not needed,—­his mediation.  But he could not know that; no, nor none of us.  True, Stagg and his wife had bragged of the powers of this strangely found actress of theirs that they were training to do great things, but folk took it for a trick of their trade.  Oh, there was curiosity enough, but ’twas on Haward’s account....  Well, he drank to her, standing at the head of the table at Marot’s ordinary, and the glass crashed over his shoulder, and we all went to the play.”

“Yes, yes!” cried Truelove, breathing quickly, and quite forgetting how great a vanity was under discussion.

“’Twas ‘Tamerlane,’ the play that this traitorous generation calls for every 5th of November.  It seems that the Governor—­a Whig as rank as Argyle—­had ordered it again for this week.  ’Tis a cursed piece of slander that pictures the Prince of Orange a virtuous Emperor, his late Majesty of France a hateful tyrant.  But for Haward, whose guest I was, I had not sat there with closed lips.  I had sprung to my feet and given those flatterers, those traducers, the lie!  The thing taunted and angered until she entered.  Then I forgot.”

“And she—­and Audrey?”

“Arpasia was her name in the play.  She entered late; her death came before the end; there was another woman who had more to do.  It all mattered not, I have seen a great actress.”

“Darden’s Audrey!” said Truelove, in a whisper.

“That at the very first; not afterwards,” answered MacLean.  “She was dressed, they say, as upon the night at the Palace, that first night of Haward’s fever.  When she came upon the stage, there was a murmur like the wind in the leaves.  She was most beautiful,—­’beauteous in hatred,’ as the Sultan in the play called her,—­dark and wonderful, with angry eyes.  For a little while she must stand in silence, and in these moments men and women stared at her, then turned and looked at Haward.  But when she spoke we forgot that she was Darden’s Audrey.”

MacLean laughed again.  “When the play was ended,—­or rather, when her part in it was done,—­the house did shake so with applause that Stagg had to remonstrate.  There’s naught talked of to-day in Williamsburgh but Arpasia; and when I came down Palace Street this morning, there was a great crowd about the playhouse door.  Stagg might sell his tickets for to-night at a guinea apiece.  ‘Venice Preserved’ is the play.”