Page:Coo-ee - tales of Australian life by Australian ladies.djvu/134

130 had met them at every decent house. I was certainly not crushed by the information.

'Ah, but I am not a great creature, with a world-known name. I am only a poor little one, who hopes and waits--waits, perhaps, for years' (the artless tap was quite turned on now)--'and then--I ran away--engaged as I was, too. My people were old-fashioned; the stage for them was the threshold of hell--and I was so young--so young--not so much in years, perhaps,' she cried (I think she noticed an uncontrollable flash of intelligence in my eyes), 'as in experience. I was brought up with my sister in a Parisian convent school' ('Ah,' thought I, 'that's where you learnt your little ways!') 'under such strict supervision; and afterwards I lived for my dying sister, and never went out. She died--and then--I could not live then. I must have change and excitement--I could get neither in our narrow, refined circle. I knew I could act. I felt it tingling in every vein' (she threw out her arms with a dramatic fling)--'I had to go--I was a wicked girl. Ah, I went to London--away from the man I loved. He was a Captain Panton in the 7th Hussars' (she hid nothing, this young person). 'Ah, look at his picture,' she continued, extricating it from inside her dress.

He looked quite a decent creature, with nothing to distinguish him from hundreds of his kind. I wondered with an inward grin if he were a stage lover.

Fresh suspicions always kept cropping up in my