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.