a broken line of passionate thanks for unmerited kindness.  Now as he bent over her she caught his wrist lightly with her hand, and her touch burned him through the lace of his ruffles.  With her other hand she spread her fan; Mr. Lee’s shoulder knot also screened them while Mr. Grymes had engaged its owner’s attention, and pretty Madam Byrd was in animated conversation with the occupants of a neighboring box.  “Is it well?” asked Evelyn, very low.

Haward’s answer was as low, and bravely spoken with his eyes meeting her clear gaze, and her touch upon his wrist.  “For me, Evelyn, it is very well,” he said.  “For her—­may I live to make it well for her, forever and a day well for her!  She is to be my wife.”

“I am glad,” said Evelyn,—­“very glad.”

“You are a noble lady,” he answered.  “Once, long ago, I styled myself your friend, your equal.  Now I know better my place and yours, and as from a princess I take your alms.  For your letter—­that letter, Evelyn, which told me what you thought, which showed me what to do—­I humbly thank you.”

She let fall her hand from her silken lap, and watched with unseeing eyes the mimicry of life upon the stage before them, where Selima knelt to Tamerlane, and Moneses mourned for Arpasia.  Presently she said again, “I am glad;” and then, when they had kept silence for a while, “You will live at Fair View?”

“Ay,” he replied.  “I will make it well for her here in Virginia.”

“You must let me help you,” she said.  “So old a friend as I may claim that as a right.  To-morrow I may visit her, may I not?  Now we must look at the players.  When she enters there is no need to cry for silence.  It comes of itself, and stays; we watch her with straining eyes.  Who is that man in a cloak, staring at us from the pit?  See, with the great peruke and the scar!”

Haward, bending, looked over the rail, then drew back with a smile.  “A half-breed trader,” he said, “by name Jean Hugon.  Something of a character.”

“He looked strangely at us,” said Evelyn, “with how haggard a face!  My scarf, Mr. Lee?  Thank you.  Madam, have you the right of the matter from Kitty Page?”

The conversation became general, and soon, the act approaching its end, and other gentlemen pressing into the box which held so beautiful a woman, so great a catch, and so assured a belle as Mistress Evelyn Byrd, Haward arose and took his leave.  To others of the brilliant company assembled in the playhouse he paid his respects, speaking deferentially to the Governor, gayly to his fellow Councilors and planters, and bowing low to many ladies.  All this was in the interval between the acts.  At the second parting of the curtain he resumed his former station in the pit.  With intention he had chosen a section of it where were few of his own class.  From the midst of the ruder sort he could watch her more freely, could exult at his ease in her beauty both of face and mind.