Audrey

"And she--and Audrey?"

"Arpasia was her name in the play. She entered late; her death came before

the end; there was another woman who had more to do. It all mattered not,

I have seen a great actress."

"Darden's Audrey!" said Truelove, in a whisper.

"That at the very first; not afterwards," answered MacLean. "She was

dressed, they say, as upon the night at the Palace, that first night of

Haward's fever. When she came upon the stage, there was a murmur like the

wind in the leaves. She was most beautiful,--'beauteous in hatred,' as the

Sultan in the play called her,--dark and wonderful, with angry eyes. For a

little while she must stand in silence, and in these moments men and women

stared at her, then turned and looked at Haward. But when she spoke we

forgot that she was Darden's Audrey."

MacLean laughed again. "When the play was ended,--or rather, when her part

in it was done,--the house did shake so with applause that Stagg had to

remonstrate. There's naught talked of to-day in Williamsburgh but Arpasia;

and when I came down Palace Street this morning, there was a great crowd

about the playhouse door. Stagg might sell his tickets for to-night at a

guinea apiece. 'Venice Preserved' is the play."

"And Marmaduke Haward,--what of him?" asked Truelove softly.

"He is English," said MacLean, after a pause. "He can make of his face a

smiling mask, can keep his voice as even and as still as the pool that is

a mile away from the fierce torrent its parent. It is a gift they have,

the English. I remember at Preston"--He broke off with a sigh. "There will

be an end some day, I suppose. He will win her at last to his way of

thinking; and having gained her, he will be happy. And yet to my mind

there is something unfortunate, strange and fatal, in the aspect of this

girl. It hath always been so. She is such a one as the Lady in Green. On a

Halloween night, standing in the twelfth rig, a man might hear her voice

upon the wind. I would old Murdoch of Coll, who hath the second sight,

were here: he could tell the ending of it all."

An hour later found the Highlander well upon his way to Williamsburgh,

walking through wood and field with his long stride, his heart warm within

him, his mind filled with the thought of Truelove and the home that he

would make for her in the rude, upriver country. Since the two had sat

beneath the oak, clouds had gathered, obscuring the sun. It was now gray

and cold in the forest, and presently snow began to fall, slowly, in large

flakes, between the still trees.