“Felix, is it you?—­you are indeed my protector!”

It was Miss Jones!  It was Fausta!  She was the legatee of Miss Stillingfleet.  My first thought was, “O, if that beggarly usher had let me go!  Will I ever, ever think I have better rights than the Public again?”

I took her in my arms.  I carried her to the sofa.  I could hardly speak for excitement.  Then I did say that I had been wild with terror; that I had feared I had lost her, and lost her forever; that to have lost that interview would have been worse to me than death; for unless she knew that I loved her better than man ever loved woman, I could not face a lonely night, and another lonely day.

“My dear, dear child,” I said, “you may think me wild; but I must say this,—­it has been pent up too long.”

“Say what you will,” she said after a moment, in which still I held her in my arms; she was trembling so that she could not have sat upright alone,—­“say what you will, if only you do not tell me to spend another day alone.”

And I kissed her, and I kissed her, and I kissed her, and I said, “Never, darling, God helping me, till I die!”

How long we sat there I do not know.  Neither of us spoke again.  For one, I looked out on the sunset and the bay.  We had but just time to rearrange ourselves in positions more independent, when Mr. A——­came in, this time in alarm, to say:—­

“Miss Jones, we must get you out of this place, or we must hide you somewhere.  I believe, before God, they will storm this passage, and pull the house about our ears.”

He said this, not conscious as he began that I was there.  At that moment, however, I felt as if I could have met a million men.  I started forward and passed him, saying, “Let me speak to them.”  I rushed upon the stage, fairly pushing back two or three bullies who were already upon it.  I sprang upon the table, kicking down the red box as I did so, so that the red tickets fell on the floor and on the people below.  One stuck in an old man’s spectacles in a way which made the people in the galleries laugh.  A laugh is a great blessing at such a moment.  Curiosity is another.  Three loud words spoken like thunder do a good deal more.  And after three words the house was hushed to hear me.  I said:—­

“Be fair to the girl.  She has no father nor mother She has no brother nor sister.  She is alone in the world, with nobody to help her but the Public—­and me!”

The audacity of the speech brought out a cheer and we should have come off in triumph, when some rowdy—­the original “face” man, I suppose—­said,—­

“And who are you?”

If the laugh went against me now I was lost, of course.  Fortunately I had no time to think.  I said without thinking,—­

“I am the Child of the Public, and her betrothed husband!”