don’t believe there’s a circulating library in Bath I haven’t been at.”  The manager started in his chair.  “My heart alive! she speaks out without telling!” The dialogue went on.  Lucy produced the novels for Miss Lydia Languish’s private reading from under her cloak.  The manager rose excitably to his feet.  Marvelous!  No hurry with the books; no dropping them.  She looked at the titles before she announced them to her mistress; she set down “Humphrey Clinker” on “The Tears of Sensibility” with a smart little smack which pointed the antithesis.  One moment—­and she announced Julia’s visit; another—­and she dropped the brisk waiting-maid’s courtesy; a third—­and she was off the stage on the side set down for her in the book.  The manager wheeled round on his stool, and looked hard at Miss Garth.  “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said.  “Miss Marrable told me, before we began, that this was the young lady’s first attempt.  It can’t be, surely!”

“It is,” replied Miss Garth, reflecting the manager’s look of amazement on her own face.  Was it possible that Magdalen’s unintelligible industry in the study of her part really sprang from a serious interest in her occupation—­an interest which implied a natural fitness for it.

The rehearsal went on.  The stout lady with the wig (and the excellent heart) personated the sentimental Julia from an inveterately tragic point of view, and used her handkerchief distractedly in the first scene.  The spinster relative felt Mrs. Malaprop’s mistakes in language so seriously, and took such extraordinary pains with her blunders, that they sounded more like exercises in elocution than anything else.  The unhappy lad who led the forlorn hope of the company, in the person of “Sir Anthony Absolute,” expressed the age and irascibility of his character by tottering incessantly at the knees, and thumping the stage perpetually with his stick.  Slowly and clumsily, with constant interruptions and interminable mistakes, the first act dragged on, until Lucy appeared again to end it in soliloquy, with the confession of her assumed simplicity and the praise of her own cunning.

Here the stage artifice of the situation presented difficulties which Magdalen had not encountered in the first scene—­and here, her total want of experience led her into more than one palpable mistake.  The stage-manager, with an eagerness which he had not shown in the case of any other member of the company, interfered immediately, and set her right.  At one point she was to pause, and take a turn on the stage—­she did it.  At another, she was to stop, toss her head, and look pertly at the audience—­she did it.  When she took out the paper to read the list of the presents she had received, could she give it a tap with her finger (Yes)?  And lead off with a little laugh (Yes—­after twice trying)?  Could she read the different items with a sly look at the end of each sentence, straight at the pit (Yes, straight at the pit, and as sly as