be inappropriate.'

'But how do you think she'll play the Countess?' asked Beaumont.

'Oh, we mustn't speak of that now she's going to be married,' and, thinking
he could not better this last remark, Mortimer bade the ladies good-bye and
went off with curls and coat-tails alike swinging in the breeze. Farther up
the street Beaumont and Dolly were joined by Leslie, Bret, and Dubois, and
the same topics were again discussed. 'What are you going to give?' 'Have
you bought your present?' 'Have you seen mine?' 'Do you know who's going to
be at the wedding breakfast? They can't ask more than a dozen or so.' 'Have
you heard that the chorus have clubbed together to buy Dick a chain?' 'It's
very good of them, but they'll feel hurt at not being asked to the
breakfast.' 'What will the Lennoxes do?' These and a hundred other
questions of a similar sort had been asked in the dressing-rooms, in the
wings, in the streets at every available moment since Morton and Cox's
_opera bouffe_ company had arrived in Liverpool. Everybody professed
to consider the event the happiest and most fortunate that could have
happened, but Mortimer's words, 'There's many a slip between the ring and
the finger,' recurred to them whenever the conversation came to a pause,
and they hoped the marriage might yet be averted, even when they stood one
bright summer morning assembled on the stage, awaiting the arrival of the
bride and bridegroom. The name of the church had been kept a secret, and
all that was known was that Leslie--who had joined another company in
Liverpool--Bret, Montgomery, and Beaumont had gone to attend as witnesses,
and that they would be back at the theatre at twelve to run through the
third act of _Olivette_ before producing it that night.

Many false alarms were given, but when at last the bridal party walked from
the wings on to the stage, Dick's appearance provoked a little good-natured