, and proceeded
cautiously, feeling his way, as it were, towards the interior of the
recess thus protected. "My grandchild declined your flattering proposal
with my full approbation. She did not consider--neither did I--that
the managerial rights of Mr. Rugge entitled him to the moiety of her
face--off the stage." The Comedian paused, and with a voice, the mimic
drollery of which no hoarseness could altogether mar, chanted the old
line,--

"'My face is my fortune, sir,' she said."

Vance smiled; Lionel laughed; Sophy nestled still nearer to the boy.

GENTLEMAN WAIFE (with pathos and dignity).--"You see before you an old
man: one way of life is the same to me as another. But she,--do you
think Mr. Rugge's stage the right place for her?"

VANCE.--"Certainly not. Why did you not introduce her to the London
Manager who would have engaged yourself?"

Waife could not conceal a slight change of countenance. "How do I know
she would have succeeded? She had never then trod the boards. Besides,
what strikes you as so good in a village show may be poor enough in a
metropolitan theatre. Gentlemen, I do my best for her; you cannot
think otherwise, since she maintains me! I am no OEdipus, yet she is my
Antigone."

VANCE.--"You know the classics, sir. Mr. Merle said you were a
scholar!--read Sophocles in his native Greek, I presume, sir?"

MR. WAIFE.--"You jeer at the unfortunate: I am used to it."

VANCE (confused).--"I did not mean to wound you: I beg pardon. But your
language and manner are not what--what one might expect to find in a--in
a--Bandit persecuted by a remorseless Baron."

MR. WAIFE.--"Sir, you say you are an artist. Have you heard no tales of
your professional brethren,--men of genius the highest, who won fame,
which I never did, and failed of fortunes, as I have done? Their own
fault, perhaps,--improvidence, wild habits, ignorance of the way how to
treat life and deal with their fellow-men; such fault may have been
mine too. I suffer for it: no matter; I ask none to save me. You are a
painter: you would place her features on your canvas; you would have
her rank amongst your own creations. She may become a part of your
immortality. Princes may gaze on the effigies of the innocent happy
childhood, to which your colours lend imperishable glow. They may ask
who and what was this fair creature? Will you answer, 'One whom I found
in tinsel, and so left, sure that she would die in rags!'--Save her!"

Lion