“I should like to see Gillian in love,” laughed Anna; “and I really think she is afraid of it, she looked so fierce.”

The next evening there was time for a grand review in the parish school-room of all possible performers on the spot.  In the midst, however, a sudden fancy flashed across Lancelot that there was something curiously similar between those two young people who occupied the stage, or what was meant to be such.  Their gestures corresponded to one another, their voices had the same ring, and their eyes wore almost of the same dark colour.  Now Gerald’s eyes had always been the only part of him that was not Underwood, and had never quite accorded with his fair complexion.

“Hungarian, I suppose,” said Lance to himself, but he was not quite satisfied.

What struck him as strange was that though dreadfully shy and frightened when off the stage, as soon as she appeared upon it, though not yet in costume, she seemed to lose all consciousness that she was not Mona.

Perhaps Mrs. Henderson could have told him.  Her husband being manager and partner at Mr. White’s marble works, she had always taken great interest in the young women employed, had actually attended to their instruction, assisted in judging of their designs, and used these business relations to bring them into inner contact with her, so that her influence had become very valuable.  She was at the little room which she still kept at the office, when there was a knock at the door, and “Miss Schnetterling” begged to speak to her.  She felt particularly tender towards the girl, who was evidently doing her best in a trying and dangerous position, and after the first words it came out—-

“Oh, Mrs. Henderson, do you think I must be Mona?”

“Have you any real objection, Lydia?  Mr. Flight and all of them seem to wish it.”

“Yes, and I can’t bear not to oblige Mr. Flight, who has been so good, so good!” cried Lydia, with a foreign gesture, clasping her hands.  “Indeed, perhaps my mother would not let me off.  That is what frightens me.  But if you or some real lady could put me aside they could not object.”

“I do not understand you, my dear.  You would meet with no unpleasantness from any one concerned, and you can be with the fairy children.  Are you shy?  You were not so in the fairy scenes last winter-—you acted very nicely.”

“Oh yes, I liked it then.  It carries me away; but-—oh!  I am afraid!”

“Please tell me, my dear.”

Lydia lowered her voice.

“I must tell you, Mrs. Henderson, mother was a singer in public once, and a dancer; and oh! they were so cruel to her, beat her, and starved her, and ill-used her.  She used to tell me about it when I was very little, but now I have grown older, and the people like my voice, she is quite changed.  She wants me to go and sing at the Herring-and-a-Half, but I won’t, I won’t-—among all the tipsy men.  That was why she would not let me be a pupil-teacher, and why she will not see a priest.  And now-—now I am sure she has a plan in her head.  If I do well at this operetta, and people like me, I am sure she will get the man at the circus to take me, by force perhaps, and then it would be all her life over again, and I know that was terrible.”