"I shall escort Mistress Sarah," said Lord Rosslyn, and, turning to me: "Are you ready?"

"It is a very short distance from the house," said Kitty.

"I dare say I shall be wishing it were longer," said Lord Rosslyn, smiling at me.

I said: "It is very gracious of Lord Rosslyn to offer, but it really is not necessary."

"It is necessary for my pleasure," he said. "Come, Mistress Sarah, I shall take you to your home."

"You see," said Kitty, "I am right, am I not? What did I tell you? Never 'May I?,' always *I shall.' Methinks my lord is a very forceful gentleman."

"As ever, Mistress Kitty, you have assessed the situation accurately."

"Get your cloak," said Kitty to me.

"I shall await you here," added Lord Rosslyn.

So, he would escort me home, I thought. Well, it was gracious of him. After all, he was a noble lord and I but the agent's daughter. I believed such distinctions were very important in the world of which I had just had a glimpse.

I said goodbye to Sir Henry and Lady Willerton, thanked them for a most enjoyable evening and told them that someone was going to escort me home.

They nodded, relieved, I was sure, to be free of the need to concern themselves with me. Lady Willerton told me how pleased she was that I had come, for I had contributed a great deal to the success of the play.

Lord Rosslyn was waiting for me.

"Now you shall guide me," he said, "and together we will undertake this perilous journey across the fields to your home."

"It is not very far and it was not really necessary for you to come."

"It is very necessary and I would not be deprived of it for a king's ransom. Come."

Kitty was beside us. She was wearing a black velvet cloak and her eyes were sparkling with mischief.

"Lady Donnerton," said Lord Rosslyn, and it was the first time I had seen him taken aback.

"The fancy took me for a little walk," said Kitty, "so I have decided to accompany you."

As I had guessed, life returned to exactly what it had been before the summons had come to act in a play at Willerton House.

The world seemed a very drab place now. I had to help my mother in the kitchen and learn the duties of a housewife. I was no longer a child. She would like me to marry in a year or so. My mother had the very man in sight. He was Jacob Summers of Runacres Farm on the Willerton estate. My father said that Runacres was the most prosperous of all the farms on the estate and the reason was that William Summers—father of Jacob, Thomas, David, Rebecca and Esther—was the best farmer in the district.

My father approved of the Summers family because of their skill in tilling the land; my mother because, like herself, they deplored the turn to what they called Licentious Living and adhered as firmly to the Puritan way of life as she did.

So she had chosen the eldest son of that dismal household to be my husband.

As for me, I considered the possibility with acute distaste. It was not that Jacob was unpleasant; he was a very ordinary young man, but I had found him excessively dull, even before that wondrous night. Now I regarded the prospect of spending my life with him as something not to be taken seriously for a moment.

Weeks went by. I saw Maria occasionally, but since we had ceased to be in the schoolroom together, our friendship was gradually fading. The Wilier tons were away a great deal. In fact, it seemed that they were rarely at home. I had begun to believe that that glorious adventure was an isolated incident in my life and I should never know the like again.

It must have been three months after that occasion when I heard that the Willertons were back at the House and there was once more entertaining. Foolishly, I hoped that there would be another play and I should be asked to perform. Several days passed. The house party would soon be over, for they rarely lasted more than four or five days, and the Willertons would then go back to their London residence, and here we should settle down to the old dull routine. I told myself I was a fool to have believed that playing the waif had been a turning-point in my life.

And then, as had happened on another occasion, a serving man came to the house with a note for me. My heart leaped when I saw that it was from Kitty. She wanted to see me at the Capulet balcony as before, she said. We could talk there.

Another play, I thought! A part for me!

Eagerly I kept the tryst, and with what joy I greeted her. I saw at once that she was different. Her expression was strained; she had lost weight and her face seemed a little drawn. The hopes I had harbored that she had come to tell me there was to be another play vanished.

I said: "Something is wrong."

She nodded. ''Yes. very wrong. I am very uncertain. I thought of you. I have thought of you a good deal. You remind me of what I was ... once ... when I was about your age. All the opposition I had to face. Now I have to face a decision."

''And you want to talk to me about it!"

She laughed. Then she said: "I want to talk to you about something else."

She was staring straight ahead.

"What?" I asked.

"It seems to me that my position is not unlike yours. We are both prisoners."

"Prisoners!"

She was silent for a few seconds, then she went on: "Yes, prisoners—held captive by circumstances, we have come to a point m our lives when we have to make a choice. This way ... or that? To accept what fate has given us or break out and make our own way."

I had no idea what she meant, and I must have looked very puzzled.

"Oh," she cried, "how foolish of me. I talk in riddles and you think I am crazy. Perhaps I am. Let me tell you something. I want to go back to the stage, but I am married to Lord Donnerton. Lady Donnerton could not be an actress, could she? The wife of one of the foremost peers in the land! You see, it could not be."

"Could it not?"

She shook her head. "There are rules ... obligations. I should never have married him, Sarah."

"Why did you?"

She looked at me and gave one of her laughs, but this one was without mirth.

"Why does one do these things? He was very eager. I thought it would be foolish to go on refusing. I considered all the advantages. I told myself that one day I should regret it if I did not take this chance of wealth and comfort. He is a kind man. He would have looked after me always. But I cannot endure this life, Sarah. I am bored ... bored ... so hideously bored."

"So you are going to leave him and go back to the theater."

"I have to, Sarah. I want the excitement ... that feeling that comes to you when there is a sudden hush, and the play begins. You understand?"

"I think so."

She turned to me, smiling. "I knew you would. Perhaps that is why I came. That ... and something else."

She was biting her lips and staring ahead.

"When are you going back to the stage?" I asked.

"Soon."

"What does Lord Donnerton say?"

"He does not know yet. He has been good to me, Sarah ... but he does not understand. He never will."

"No, I suppose he could not."

"But you do."

"Yes, I think I do."

"All you have seen is an amateur attempt on an improvised stage and people pretending to act for fun. Most of them would have been booed off the London stage in five minutes. But we kept it going, you and I between us, Sarah, and I think some of them actually enjoyed our little piece for what it was. Well, Sarah, you are an actress. That is why I am telling you all this. You know what I am talking about. Few would. Not the people I am now surrounded with, that is. They would think I was crazy, giving up a life of luxury for one of uncertainty. But I have to do it. Sarah, I'd rather die than go on like this."

"Then you must do it," I said.

She seized me suddenly and kissed me. I saw tears in her eyes.

"I am going to, Sarah," she said. "I am going back where I belong. Do you think it strange that I should come and talk to you like this?"

"I ... I am not sure."

"I have been thinking such a lot about you."

I looked at her in amazement.

"Yes," she went on, "I have. You would think I had troubles enough of my own, and in a way they are linked. In you I see myself. I was always acting when I was a little girl. It was born in me, as it is in you. Of course, when I was growing up, there were no theaters."

"No. In my childhood neither."

"But you were young when the King came back."

"I was eleven."

"And now you are fifteen. It has worked well for you. I remember the day. There was rejoicing throughout the land. Not with everyone, of course. But there were many of us who were tired of being Puritans. ^Xe wanted some life ... some gaiety. The theaters were opened and women were allowed to appear on the stage. When I heard that I came to London. My family were against it. They wanted me to settle down and marry. I could have done. There was someone very eager to marry me, but I knew what it would be like. Prayers morning and evening. A sober life, regular churchgoing. gloom and so-called virtue I could not endure. And in London the theaters were open. I ran away from home, Sarah. I came to London. I had a good friend who helped me. She had always wanted to be an actress and I was fortunate to have her. I cannot explain to you the wondrous feeling of stepping on to a stage for the first time."

"I know it." I cried. "I know it well. I do not have to experience it to know."