Excerpt from A Leading Lady: A Story of the Stage AN elderly bald-headed man, dressed in a seedy gray tweed suit, was standing, hat in hand, at the end of the little narrow passage which gave access to the business office of the Royal Charing Cross Theatre. In front of him the closed and locked door barred further progress. He shuffled about for a moment or two, as if undecided whether or not to venture upon asking for admittance, and stared at the flaring gaslight which illuminated the little corridor, and turned and twisted upon his heel twice or thrice in evident anxious self-com munion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.