if that helped
her to be quicker. Everything she wore seemed too hot, too heavy, or
too tight, and she flung hat and cloak and bodice down just where she
took them off in her haste to get rid of them. Throwing her things
about like that was an old trick of her childhood, and becoming
conscious of what she was doing, she remembered it, and began to think
of herself as she had been then, and so forget her troubled self as
she was at that moment--fresh from the excitement and terror of an
extraordinary achievement, a great success. For she had spoken that
night as few have spoken--spoken to a hostile audience and fascinated
them by the power of her personality, the mesmeric power which is part
of the endowment of an orator, and had so moved them that they rose at
last and cheered her for her eloquence, whether they held her opinions
or not. Then there had come friendly handshakes and congratulations
and encouragement; and one had said, "Beth is launched at last upon
her true career."

"But who could have thought that that was her bent?" another had
asked.

Beth did not hear the answer, but she knew what it should have been.
She had been misled herself, and so had every one else, by her pretty
talent for writing, her love of turning phrases, her play on the music
of words. The writing had come of cultivation, but this--the last
discovered power--was the natural gift. Angelica had said that all the
indications had pointed to literary ability in Beth, but there had
been other indications hitherto unheeded. There was that day at
Castletownrock when Beth invited the country people in to see the
house, and, for the first time, found words flowing from her lips
eloquently; there were her preachings to Emily and Bernadine in the
acting-room, of which they never wearied; her first harangue to the
girls who had caught her bathing on the sands, and the power of her
subsequent teaching which had bound them to the Secret Service of
Humanity for as long as she liked; there was her storytelling at
school, too, and her lectures to the girls--not to mention the charm
of her ordinary conversation when the mood was upon her, as in the
days when she used to sit and fish with the bearded sailors, and held
them with curious talk as she had held the folk in Ireland,
fascinating them. And then there was the unexpected triumph of her
first public attempt--indications enough of a natural bent, had there
been any one to interpret them.

Beth,