Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/121

Rh "You speak it in perfection."

"And English just as well," said Miss Rooth.

"You oughtn't to be an actress; you ought to be a governess."

"Oh, don't tell us that: it's to escape from that!" pleaded Mrs. Rooth.

"I'm very sure your daughter will escape from that," Peter Sherringham was moved to remark.

"Oh, if you could help her!" the lady exclaimed, pathetically.

"She has certainly all the qualities that strike the eye," said Peter.

"You are most kind, sir!" Mrs. Rooth declared, elegantly draping herself.

"She knows Célimène; I have heard her do Célimène," Gabriel Nash said to Madame Carré.

"And she knows Juliet, and Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra," added Mrs. Rooth.

"Voyons, my dear child, do you wish to work for the French stage or for the English?" the old actress demanded.

"Ours would have sore need of you, Miss Rooth," Sherringham gallantly interposed.

"Could you speak to any one in London—could you introduce her?" her mother eagerly asked.

"Dear madam, I must hear her first, and hear what Madame Carré says."

"She has a voice of rare beauty, and I understand voices," said Mrs. Rooth.

"Ah, then, if she has intelligence she has every gift."

"She has a most poetic mind," the old lady went on.