Prince Fortunatus | Page 6

noise as ever you like; the children are in Hampshire; Hugh is in Scotland; the servants are out of hearing; and our neighbors are a long way off."
This suggestion, coming from the lady of the house, was of the nature of a command, and so they leisurely trooped into the great drawing-room, where the candles were still burning. But there was something else than these artificial lights that attracted the sharp eyes of Miss Georgie Lestrange the moment she entered this new apartment. There was a curious, wan kind of color about the curtains and the French windows that did not seem natural to the room. She walked quickly forward, drew the lace hangings aside, and then, suddenly, she exclaimed,
"Why, it's almost daylight! Look here, Adela, why shouldn't we have a rehearsal of the whole piece, from end to end--a real rehearsal, this time, on the lawn? and Rose can tell us all how we are to stand, and Mr. Moore will show us what we should do besides merely speaking the lines."
This bold proposal was greeted with general acclaim, and instantly there was a bustle of preparation. Lady Sybil began to tune her violin by the side of the open piano; Lady Rosamund, who was at once scene-painter and stage-manager, as it were, got out some sheets of drawing-paper, on which she had sketched the various groups; and Lady Adela brought forth the MS. books of the play, which had been prepared under the careful (and necessary) supervision of Lionel Moore.
"Rockminster will have to figure as the audience," his eldest sister said, as she was looping up her long train of silver-gray satin preparatory to going out.
"That is a part I could play to perfection," put in Miss Lestrange's brother.
"Oh, no," Lady Adela remonstrated. "You may be wanted for Pal?mon. You see, this is how it stands. The young shepherd was originally played at Drury Lane by a boy--and in Dublin by an actress; it is a boy's part, indeed. Well, you know, we thought Cis Yorke would snap at it; and she was eager enough at first; but"--and here Lady Adela smiled demurely--"I think her courage gave way. The boy's dress looked charming as Rose sketched it for her--and the long cloak made it quite proper, you know--and very picturesque, too--but--but I think she's frightened. We can't count on her. So we may have to call on you for Pal?mon, Mr. Lestrange."
"And I have taken the liberty of cutting out the song, for it's rather stupid," said Lionel Moore, "so you've only got a few lines to repeat."
"The fewer the better," replied Mr. Percy Lestrange, who was possibly right in considering that, with his far-from-regular features and his red hair and moustache, his appearance as a handsome young swain should not have too much prominence given it.
Notwithstanding that it had been Miss Lestrange's audacious proposal that they should go masquerading in the open air, she was a wise young virgin, and she took care before going out to thrust a soft silk handkerchief into the square opening of her dress; the Ladies Sybil and Rosamund followed her example by drawing lace scarfs round their necks and shoulders; it was the young matron who was reprehensibly careless, and who, when the French windows were thrown open, went forth boldly, and without any wrap at all, into the cool air of the dawn. But for a second, as they stood on the little stone balcony above the steps leading down to the garden, this group of revellers were struck silent. The world looked so strange around them. In the mysterious gray light, that had no sort of kindly warmth in it, the grass of the lawn and the surrounding trees seemed coldly and intensely green; and cold and intense, with no richness of hue at all, were the colors of the flowers in the various plots and beds. Not a bird chirped as yet. Not a leaf stirred. But in this ghostly twilight the solitary gas lamps were beginning to show pale; and in the southern heavens the silver sickle of the moon, stealing over to the west, seemed to be taking the night with it, and leaving these faintly lilac skies to welcome the uprising of the new day.
At first, indeed, there was something curiously uncanny--something unearthly and phantasmal almost--in the spectacle of these figures, the women in white, the men in black, moving through this wan light; and their voices sounded strangely in the dead silence; but ere long a soft saffron tinge began to show itself in the east; one or two scraps of cloud in the violet skies caught a faint touch of the coming dawn; there was a more generous tone on the masses of foliage, on the flower-beds, and on the grass; and now