As she watched her breathing became rapid, laboured, her eyes filled, her face quivered uncontrollably, and she half rose from her seat, but Mr. Chesley held her back, and dropped the curtain.

“Oh, uncle!  How handsome, how refined, how noble-looking!  Poor darling mother! how could she help giving him her heart?  In all my dreams and fancies, I never even hoped to find him such a man!  My father, my father!”

She trembled so violently that Mr. Chesley said hastily: 

“Compose yourself, or I shall be forced to take you home, and your mother will be displeased; for she particularly desired that I would watch the effect of the play on those two men opposite.”

She leaned back, shut her eyes, and bravely endeavoured to conquer her agitation, and luckily at this moment the stage-curtain rose.

By the aid of photographs procured in America, and by dint of personal supervision and suggestions, Mrs. Orme had successfully arranged the exact reproduction of certain localities:  the college—­the campus—­the humble cottage of old Mrs. Chesley with its peculiar porch, whose column caps were carved to represent dogs’ heads—­the interior of a hospital, of an orphan asylum, and of the library at the parsonage.

Leaning far back in his chair, a prey to gloomy and indescribably bitter reflections, as he accustomed himself to the contemplation of the fact that the beautiful woman in whom his own fickle wayward heart had become earnestly interested, would sell herself to the grey-bearded man beside him, Cuthbert gnawed his silky moustache; while his father watched with feverish impatience for the opening of the play, and the sight of his enchantress.

The curtain rose upon a group sitting on the sward before the cottage door.  Minnie Merle in the costume of a very young girl, with her golden hair all hidden under a thick wig of dark curling locks, that straggled in childish disorder around her neck and shoulders, while her sun-bonnet, the veritable green and white gingham of other days, lay at her feet.  Beside her a tall youth, who represented Peleg Peterson, in the garb of a carpenter, with a tool-box on the ground, and in his hands a wooden doll, which he was carving for the child.

In the door of the cottage sat the grandmother knitting and nodding, with white hair shining under her snowy cap-border; and while the carpenter carved and whistled an old-fashioned ditty, “Meet me by moonlight alone,” the girl in a quavering voice attempted to accompany him.

Minnie sat with her countenance turned fully to the audience, and when Cuthbert Laurance’s eyes fell on the cottage front, and upon the face under that cloud of dark elfish locks, he caught his breath, and his eyes seemed almost starting from their sockets.  His hand fell heavily on his father’s knee, and he groaned audibly.

General Laurance turned and whispered: 

“For God’s sake, what is the matter?  Are you ill?”