addressed the stage loudly
from the pit.

"Stop! Stop!" she said. "You can't settle the difficulty that way. If
Magdalen plays Julia, who is to play Lucy?"

Miss Marrable sank back in the arm-chair, and gave way to the second
convulsion.

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Magdalen, "the thing's simple enough, I'll
act Julia and Lucy both together."

The manager was consulted on the spot. Suppressing Lucy's first
entrance, and turning the short dialogue about the novels into a
soliloquy for Lydia Languish, appeared to be the only changes of
importance necessary to the accomplishment of Magdalen's project.
Lucy's two telling scenes, at the end of the first and second acts, were
sufficiently removed from the scenes in which Julia appeared to give
time for the necessary transformations in dress. Even Miss Garth, though
she tried hard to find them, could put no fresh obstacles in the way.
The question was settled in five minutes, and the rehearsal went on;
Magdalen learning Julia's stage situations with the book in her hand,
and announcing afterward, on the journey home, that she proposed sitting
up all night to study the new part. Frank thereupon expressed his fears
that she would have no time left to help him through his theatrical
difficulties. She tapped him on the shoulder coquettishly with her part.
"You foolish fellow, how am I to do without you? You're Julia's jealous
lover; you're always making Julia cry. Come to-night, and make me cry at
tea-time. You haven't got a venomous old woman in a wig to act with now.
It's _my_ heart you're to break--and of course I shall teach you how to
do it."

The four days' interval passed busily in perpetual rehearsals, public
and private. The night of performance arrived; the guests assembled; the
great dramatic experiment stood on its trial. Magdalen had made the most
of her opportunities; she had learned all that the manager could teach
her in the time. Miss Garth left her when the overture began, sitting
apart in a corner behind the scenes, serious and silent, with her
smelling-bottle in one hand, and her book in the other, resolutely
training herself for the coming ordeal, to the very last.

The play began, with all the proper accompaniments of a theatrical
performance in private life; with a crowded audience, an African
temperature, a bursting of heated lamp-glasses, and a difficulty in
drawing up the curtain. "Fag" and "the Coachman," who opened the scene,
took leave of th