Mr. Lee, having restored the glove with all the pretty froth of words which the occasion merited, and seen Mistress Evelyn turn aside to speak with Mr. Stagg, found himself mightily inclined to improve the golden opportunity and at once lay siege to this paragon from the playhouse.  Two low bows, a three-piled, gold-embroidered compliment, a quotation from his “To Sylvia upon her Leaving the Theatre,” and the young gentleman thought his lines well laid.  But Sylvia grew restless, dealt in monosyllables, and finally retreated to Mistress Stagg’s side.  “Shall we not go home?” she whispered.  “I—­I am tired, and I have my part to study, the long speech at the end that I stumbled in last night.  Ah, let us go!”

Mistress Stagg sighed over the girl’s contumacy.  It was not thus in Bath when she was young, and men of fashion flocked to compliment a handsome player.  Now there was naught to do but to let the child have her way.  She and Audrey made their curtsies, and Mr. Charles Stagg his bow, which was modeled after that of Beau Nash.  Then the three went down the sunny path to the Palace gates, and Evelyn with the two gentlemen moved toward the house and the company within.

CHAPTER XXIX

AMOR VINCIT

By now it was early spring in Virginia, and a time of balm and pleasantness.  The season had not entered into its complete heritage of gay hues, sweet odors, song, and wealth of bliss.  Its birthday robe was yet a-weaving, its coronal of blossoms yet folded buds, its choristers not ready with their fullest paeans.  But everywhere was earnest of future riches.  In the forest the bloodroot was in flower, and the bluebird and the redbird flashed from the maple that was touched with fire to the beech just lifted from a pale green fountain.  In Mistress Stagg’s garden daffodils bloomed, and dim blue hyacinths made sweet places in the grass.  The sun lay warm upon upturned earth, blackbirds rose in squadrons and darkened the yet leafless trees, and every wind brought rumors of the heyday toward which the earth was spinning.  The days were long and sweet; at night a moon came up, and between it and the earth played soft and vernal airs.  Then a pale light flooded the garden, the shells bordering its paths gleamed like threaded pearls, and the house showed whiter than a marble sepulchre.  Mild incense, cool winds, were there, but quiet came fitfully between the bursts of noise from the lit theatre.

On such a night as this Audrey, clothed in red silk, with a band of false jewels about her shadowy hair, slipped through the stage door into the garden, and moved across it to the small white house and rest.  Her part in the play was done; for all their storming she would not stay.  Silence and herself alone, and the mirror in her room; then, sitting before the glass, to see in it darkly the woman whom she had left dead upon the boards yonder,—­no, not yonder,