appy vision, while she looked out toward the river.

"Still your father was not unkind to you, I hope," said Mrs. Meyrick,
after a minute, anxious to recall her.

"No; he petted me, and took pains to teach me. He was an actor; and I
found out, after, that the 'Coburg' I used to hear of his going to at
home was a theatre. But he had more to do with the theatre than acting.
He had not always been an actor; he had been a teacher, and knew many
languages. His acting was not very good; I think, but he managed the
stage, and wrote and translated plays. An Italian lady, a singer, lived
with us a long time. They both taught me, and I had a master besides,
who made me learn by heart and recite. I worked quite hard, though I
was so little; and I was not nine when I first went on the stage. I
could easily learn things, and I was not afraid. But then and ever
since I hated our way of life. My father had money, and we had finery
about us in a disorderly way; always there were men and women coming
and going; there was loud laughing and disputing, strutting, snapping
of fingers, jeering, faces I did not like to look at--though many
petted and caressed me. But then I remembered my mother. Even at first
when I understood nothing, I shrank away from all those things outside
me into companionship with thoughts that were not like them; and I
gathered thoughts very fast, because I read many things--plays and
poetry, Shakespeare and Schiller, and learned evil and good. My father
began to believe that I might be a great singer: my voice was
considered wonderful for a child; and he had the best teaching for me.
But it was painful that he boasted of me, and set me to sing for show
at any minute, as if I had been a musical box. Once when I was nine
years old, I played the part of a little girl who had been forsaken and
did not know it, and sat singing to herself while she played with
flowers. I did it without any trouble; but the clapping and all the
sounds of the theatre were hateful to me; and I never liked the praise
I had, because it all seemed very hard and unloving: I missed the love
and trust I had been born into. I made a life in my own thoughts quite
different from everything about me: I chose what seemed to me beautiful
out of the plays and everything, and made my world out of it; and it
was like a sharp knife always grazing me that we had two sorts of life
which jarred so with each other--women looking good and gentle on the
stage, a