Sheila...........  MISS FAY COMPTON.]

Here, if she approves the attitude of her heroine, I am tempted to argue, in my dull way, with the charming author of Sheila.  You must always remember that there was no love—­not even courtship—­before this betrothal.  The girl was swept off her feet by the honour done to her and by the chance of seeing “life” as she had never hoped to see it.  The man, on his side, wanted a son.  Was his object so very contemptible in comparison with hers?  Women marry by the myriad for the mere sake of having children, and nobody blames them.  Indeed, we call it, very reverentially, the maternal instinct.  Well, what is the matter with the paternal instinct?

However, I am not going to set my opinion up against Miss SOWERBY’S.  Where I can follow her I find so much clear insight and observation that I must needs have faith in her good judgment where I cannot understand.  This arrangement still leaves me free to prefer her in her less serious moments.  Here she is irresistible with that delicate humour of hers that is always in the picture and never has to resort to the device of manufactured epigram.  There is true artistry in her lightest touch.  Her people are not galvanised puppets; they simply draw their breath and there they are.  And she has the particular quality of charm that makes you yield your heart to her, even when your head remains your own.

How much she owes to Miss FAY COMPTON’S interpretation of Sheila she would be the first to make generous acknowledgment.  It was an astonishingly sensitive performance.  Miss COMPTON can be eloquent with a single word or none at all.  By a turn of her eyes or lips she can make you free of her inarticulate thoughts.  I must go again just to hear her say “Yes,” and give that sigh of content at the end of the First Act.

Mr. AUBREY SMITH as Mark Holdsworth had a much easier task, and did it with his habitual ease.  Mr. WILLIAM FARREN—­a very welcome return—­was perfect as ever in a good grumpy part.  It was strange to see the gentle Miss STELLA CAMPBELL playing the unsympathetic character of a jealous and rather cruel woman; but she took to it quite kindly.  Mr. LANCE LISTER, as the boy Geoffrey, who kept intervening in the most sportsmanlike way on the weaker side and adjusting some very awkward complications with the gayest and most resolute tact, was extraordinarily good.  Admirable, too, were Miss JOYCE CAREY as a shop-girl friend of Sheila’s boarding-house period, and Mr. HENRY OSCAR as her “fate,” whose line was shirts.  The scene in which these two encounter the superior relatives of Sheila’s husband abounded in good fun, kept well within the limits of comedy.  It was a pure joy to hear Miss Hooker’s garrulous efforts to carry off the situation with aggressive gentility; but even more fascinating was the abashed silence of her young man, broken only when he blurted out the word “shirts,” and gave the show away.