you please)?  The manager’s cheerful face beamed with approval.  He tucked the play under his arm, and clapped his hands gayly; the gentlemen, clustered together behind the scenes, followed his example; the ladies looked at each other with dawning doubts whether they had not better have left the new recruit in the retirement of private life.  Too deeply absorbed in the business of the stage to heed any of them, Magdalen asked leave to repeat the soliloquy, and make quite sure of her own improvement.  She went all through it again without a mistake, this time, from beginning to end; the manager celebrating her attention to his directions by an outburst of professional approbation, which escaped him in spite of himself.  “She can take a hint!” cried the little man, with a hearty smack of his hand on the prompt-book.  “She’s a born actress, if ever there was one yet!”

“I hope not,” said Miss Garth to herself, taking up the work which had dropped into her lap, and looking down at it in some perplexity.  Her worst apprehension of results in connection with the theatrical enterprise had foreboded levity of conduct with some of the gentlemen—­she had not bargained for this.  Magdalen, in the capacity of a thoughtless girl, was comparatively easy to deal with.  Magdalen, in the character of a born actress, threatened serious future difficulties.

The rehearsal proceeded.  Lucy returned to the stage for her scenes in the second act (the last in which she appears) with Sir Lucius and Fag.  Here, again, Magdalen’s inexperience betrayed itself—­and here once more her resolution in attacking and conquering her own mistakes astonished everybody.  “Bravo!” cried the gentlemen behind the scenes, as she steadily trampled down one blunder after another.  “Ridiculous!” said the ladies, “with such a small part as hers.”  “Heaven forgive me!” thought Miss.  Garth, coming round unwillingly to the general opinion.  “I almost wish we were Papists, and I had a convent to put her in to-morrow.”  One of Mr. Marrable’s servants entered the theater as that desperate aspiration escaped the governess.  She instantly sent the man behind the scene with a message:  “Miss Vanstone has done her part in the rehearsal; request her to come here and sit by me.”  The servant returned with a polite apology:  “Miss Vanstone’s kind love, and she begs to be excused—­she’s prompting Mr. Clare.”  She prompted him to such purpose that he actually got through his part.  The performances of the other gentlemen were obtrusively imbecile.  Frank was just one degree better—­he was modestly incapable; and he gained by comparison.  “Thanks to Miss Vanstone,” observed the manager, who had heard the prompting.  “She pulled him through.  We shall be flat enough at night, when the drop falls on the second act, and the audience have seen the last of her.  It’s a thousand pities she hasn’t got a better part!”

“It’s a thousand mercies she’s no more to do than she has,” muttered Miss Garth, overhearing him.  “As things are, the people can’t well turn her head with applause.  She’s out of the play in the second act—­that’s one comfort!”