Such trifling questions as lovers alone can ask and answer then passed between them; and at last came the solemn interrogatory from the kneeling Alberto:  “And will you always love me, dearest?”

Fidelia turned her meek orbs toward the ceiling, raised her hand, said “Forever!” and was about to add, “I swear,” when Bidette (Miss Wick) rushed upon the scene with the intelligence, “He comes.”

“Who?” asked Alberto.

“My father!” shrieked Fidelia.  “Go—­that way.”  She pointed with her small alabaster hand to the left wing.

Alberto vanished as per request, while Fidelia, with well-affected calmness, commenced humming an opera air, and fanning herself.  Bidette, the favorite maid, pretended to readjust a flower in her mistress’s hair.  These feminine artifices were to throw the coming father off his scent.

But the father (Mr. Johnsone, the junior of a small book-publishing house) was sharp eyed, though he lacked spectacles.  As he emerged from the right wing, he caught a distinct view of a pair of soles disappearing in the distance, and benignantly asked:  “Who is that, my child?”

The child answered:  “Only the postman, pa.”

“Where is the letter?” he asked.

“Please, sir,” interrupted Bidette, observing her mistress’s confusion, “there wasn’t no letter.  He mistook the house for another, sir.”

The father nodded his head to express his complete satisfaction with this explanation, and then told Bidette to leave the spot, as he had something of the utmost importance to tell his daughter.  Bidette pouted, and withdrew, giving a bewitching shake of her striped calico dress, to signify her hatred of brutal fathers.  This touch of nature drew plaudits from those among the audience who were but slightly acquainted with Miss Wick.  The others looked on with critical indifference.

The father took a chair, thrust out his legs like a reigning prince, and proceeded, in a story of unnecessary length, to tell his daughter that he owed one hundred and seventy thousand florins to Signor Rodicaso, and would be a ruined man in forty-eight hours if that sum were not paid.  Life, in that event, would be simply insupportable.  He had procured a pistol to blow out his brains, but had subsequently concluded to make one more effort to save himself.  He would, therefore, appeal to his daughter, as a father, and ask her to marry Signor Rodicaso, and so liquidate the debt, to-morrow.  He did not wish to influence her choice—­far from it—­but, if she did not consent, he should feel under the painful necessity of shooting himself on the spot.

The father produced a pistol, and held it to his left ear.

Fidelia, looking like a marble statue of grief, said, in a low but perfectly audible voice:  “Stay!  I will wed him.”  This was enunciated with the calmness of despair.  Not a gesture, nor a twinge of the features, nor an accent to indicate emotion of any kind.  It was in quiet efforts like these that Mrs. Slapman excelled.