“Nora, Nora! Where are you?” called a clear, girlish voice, and Cara Burt dashed headlong into a pretty bedroom all draped in white, where a tall girl was standing by an open window. “Nora!” she cried, “what are you doing up in your room at this hour, when we are all busy in the garden preparing our tableaux? Mrs Hazlitt says that she herself will recite ‘A Dream of Fair Women,’ and by unanimous consent you are to be Helen of Troy. Did any one ever suit the part so well? ‘Divinely tall, and most divinely fair.’ Why, what is the matter, Honora? Why have you that frown between your pretty brows, and why aren’t you just delighted? There is not a girl in the school who does not envy you the part. Why are you staying here, all by yourself, instead of joining in the fun downstairs? It’s a heavenly evening, and Mrs Hazlitt is in the best of humours, and we are all choosing our parts and our dresses for the grand scene. Oh, do come along, they are all calling you! There’s that tiresome little Deborah Duke—Mrs Hazlitt’s right hand, as we call her—shouting your name now, downstairs. Why don’t you come; what is the matter?”
“There is this the matter!” said Honora Beverley, and she turned and flashed two dark brown eyes out of a marvellously fair face full at her companion. “I won’t take the part of Helen of Troy; she was not a good woman, and I will have nothing to do with her. I will be Jephtha’s daughter, or Iphigenia, or anything else you like, but I will not be Helen of Troy.”
“Oh, how tiresome you are, Nora! What does the character of Helen matter? Besides, we are not supposed to know whether she is good or bad. Tennyson speaks of her—oh, so beautifully; and we have just to listen to his words, and the audience won’t know, why should they? All you have to do is just to steal out of the dusky wood and stand for a minute with the limelight falling all over you, and then go back again. It’s the simplest thing in the world, and there’s no one else in the school who can take the part, for there’s no one else tall enough, or fair enough. Now, don’t be a goose; come along, this minute.”
“It’s just because I won’t be a goose that I have determined not to act Helen of Troy,” replied Honora. “Leave me alone, Cara; take the part yourself, if you wish.”
“I?” said Cara, with a laugh. “Just look at me, and see if I should make a worthy Helen of Troy!”
Now, Cara was exceedingly dark, not to say sallow, and was slightly below middle height and also rather thickly built, and even Nora laughed when she saw how unsuited her friend would be to the part.
“Well, I won’t be it, anyhow,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t want to take part in the tableaux, at all.”
“Then you will disappoint Mrs Hazlitt very cruelly,” said Cara, her voice changing. “Ah, and here comes Deborah. Dear old Deb! Now, Deborah, I am going to leave this naughty girl in your hands. She is the most obstreperous person in the entire school, and the most beloved, for that matter. Just say a few words of wisdom to her and bring her down within five minutes to join the rest of us in the garden. I will manage to make an excuse for her non-appearance until then.”
As Cara spoke, she waved her hand lightly towards Nora, who was still standing by the open window, and then vanished from the room as quickly as she had entered it. After she had gone, there was a moment’s silence.
Nora Beverley was close on seventeen years of age. She was pract