Produced at the Garrick Theatre on March 27, 1904

A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED....

SCENE The conservatory of No. 300 Grosvenor Square.  Hour, close on midnight.  A ball is in progress, and dreamy waltz music is heard in the distance.

     LADY ALINE DE VAUX enters, leaning on the arm of MR. HARRISON
     CROCKSTEAD.

LADY ALINE is a tall, exquisitely-gowned girl, of the conventional and much-admired type of beauty.  Put her in any drawing-room in the world, and she would at once be recognised as a highborn Englishwoman.  She has in her, in embryo, all those excellent qualities that go to make a great lady:  the icy stare, the haughty movement of the shoulder, the disdainful arch of the lip; she has also, but only an experienced observer would notice it, something of wistfulness, something that speaks of a sore and wounded heart—­though it is sufficiently evident that this organ is kept under admirable control.  A girl who has been placed in a position of life where artificiality rules, who has been taught to be artificial and has thoroughly learned her lesson; yet one who would unhesitatingly know the proper thing to do did a camel bolt with her in the desert, or an eastern potentate invite her to become his two hundred and fifty-seventh wife.  In a word, a lady of complete self-possession and magnificent control. MR. CROCKSTEAD is a big, burly man of forty or so, and of the kind to whom the ordinary West End butler would consider himself perfectly justified in declaring that her ladyship was not at home.  And yet his evening clothes sit well on him; and there is a certain air of command about the man that would have made the butler uncomfortable.  That functionary would have excused himself by declaring that MR. CROCKSTEAD didn’t look a gentleman.  And perhaps he doesn’t.  His walk is rather a slouch; he has a way of keeping his hands in his pockets, and of jerking out his sentences; a way, above all, of seeming perfectly indifferent to the comfort of the people he happens to be addressing.  The impression he gives is one of power, not of refinement; and the massive face, with its heavy lines, and eyes that are usually veiled, seems to give no clue whatever to the character of the man within.

     The couple break apart when they enter the room; LADY ALINE is
     the least bit nervous, though she shows no trace of it; MR.
     CROCKSTEAD absolutely imperturbable and undisturbed.

CROCKSTEAD. [Looking around.] Ah—­this is the place—­very quiet, retired, romantic—­et cetera.  Music in the distance—­all very appropriate and sentimental.

[She leaves him, and sits, quietly fanning herself; he stands, looking at her.] You seem perfectly calm, Lady Aline?

ALINE. [Sitting.] Conservatories are not unusual appendages to a ball-room, Mr. Crockstead; nor is this conservatory unlike other conservatories.