CHAPTER LIII.

FANNY BEHIND THE SCENES.--REMINISCENCES OF YOUTH.--THE UNIVERSALITY OF
TRICK.--THE SUPPER AT FANNY MILLINGER'S.--TALK ON A THOUSAND MATTERS,
EQUALLY LIGHT AND TRUE.--FANNY'S SONG.

The play was Pizarro, and Fanny Millinger acted Cora, Godolphin and
Radclyffe went behind the scenes.

"Ah!" said Fanny, as she stood in her white Peruvian dress, waiting her
turn to re-enter the stage,--"ah, Godolphin! this reminds me of old
times. How many years have passed since you used to take such pleasure in
this mimic life! Well do I remember your musing eye and thoughtful brow
bent kindly on me from the stage-box yonder: and do you recollect how
prettily you used to moralise on the deserted scenes when the play was
over? And you sometimes waited on these very boards to escort me home.
Those times have changed. Heigh-ho!"

"Ay, Fanny, we have passed through new worlds of feeling since then.
Could life be to us now what it was at that time, we might love each other
anew: but tell me, Fanny, has not the experience of life made you a wiser
woman? Do you not seek more to enjoy the present--to pluck Tirne's fruit
on the bough, ere yet the ripeness is gone? I do. I dreamed away my
youth--I strive to enjoy my manhood."

"Then," said Fanny, with that quickness with which, in matters of the
heart, women beat all our philosophy--"then I can prophesy that, since we
parted, you have loved or lost some one. Regret, which converts the
active mind into the dreaming temper, makes the dreamer hurry into