Audrey

For an hour it had been very quiet, very peaceful, in the small white

house on Palace Street. Darden was not there; for the Commissary had sent

for him, having certain inquiries to make and a stern warning to deliver.

Mistress Deborah had been asked to spend the night with an acquaintance in

the town, so she also was out and gone. Mistress Stagg and Audrey kept the

lower rooms, while overhead Mr. Charles Stagg, a man that loved his art,

walked up and down, and, with many wavings of a laced handkerchief and

much resort to a gilt snuffbox, reasoned with Plato of death and the soul.

The murmur of his voice came down to the two women, and made the only

sound in the house. Audrey, sitting by the window, her chin upon her hand

and her dark hair shadowing her face, looked out upon the dooryard and the

Palace Street beyond. The street was lit by torches, and people were going

to the ball in coaches and chariots, on foot and in painted chairs. They

went gayly, light of heart, fine of person, a free and generous folk.

Laughter floated over to the silent watcher, and the torchlight gave her

glimpses of another land than her own.

Many had been Mistress Stagg's customers since morning, and something had

she heard besides admiration of her wares and exclamation at her prices.

Now, as she sat with some gay sewing beneath her nimble fingers, she

glanced once and again at the shadowed face opposite her. If the look was

not one of curiosity alone, but had in it an admixture of new-found

respect; if to Mistress Stagg the Audrey of yesterday, unnoted,

unwhispered of, was a being somewhat lowlier than the Audrey of to-day, it

may be remembered for her that she was an actress of the early eighteenth

century, and that fate and an old mother to support had put her in that

station.

The candles beneath their glass shades burned steadily; the house grew

very quiet; the noises of the street lessened and lessened, for now nearly

all of the people were gone to the ball. Audrey watched the round of light

cast by the nearest torch. For a long time she had watched it, thinking

that he might perhaps cross the circle, and she might see him in his

splendor. She was still watching when he knocked at the garden door.

Mistress Stagg, sitting in a dream of her own, started violently. "La,

now, who may that be?" she exclaimed. "Go to the door, child. If 'tis a

stranger, we shelter none such, to be taken up for the harboring of

runaways!"

Audrey went to the door and opened it. A moment's pause, a low cry, and

she moved backward to the wall, where she stood with her slender form

sharply drawn against the white plaster, and with the fugitive, elusive

charm of her face quickened into absolute beauty, imperious for attention.

Haward, thus ushered into the room, gave the face its due. His eyes,

bright and fixed, were for it alone. Mistress Stagg's curtsy went

unacknowledged save by a slight, mechanical motion of his hand, and her

inquiry as to what he lacked that she could supply received no answer. He

was a very handsome man, of a bearing both easy and commanding, and

to-night he was splendidly dressed in white satin with embroidery of gold.

To one of the women he seemed the king, who could do no wrong; to the

other, more learned in the book of the world, he was merely a fine

gentleman, whose way might as well be given him at once, since, spite of

denial, he would presently take it.