reduce
me to a state of imbecility, through fear, and then ask me to make a
close study of violent madness--since the two conditions were generally
reversed.

The people laughed, but there was no responsive smile on my lips, as I
entered upon a period of mental misery that only ended with the
triumphant first night.

I did all I could do to get at _Cora's_ character and standing before the
dread catastrophe--feeling that her madness must to some extent be tinged
by past habits and personal peculiarities. I got a copy of the French
novel--that was not an affectation, but a necessity, as it had not then
been translated, and I was greatly impressed with the minute description
of the destruction done by the bullet _George_ had fired into her face.
Portions of the jaw-bone had been shot away; the eye, much injured, had
barely been saved, but it was drawn and distorted.

As the woman's beauty had been her letter of introduction to the gilded
world, indeed had been her sole capital, that "scar" became of tremendous
value in the make-up of the part, since it would explain, and in some
scant measure excuse, her revengeful actions.

Still, as the play was done in Paris, the "scar" was almost ignored by
that brilliant actress, Madame Rousseil. I had her photograph in the part
of _Cora_, and while she had a drapery passed low beneath her jaws to
indicate some injury to her neck or breast, her face was absolutely
unblemished.

To my mind that weakened _Cora's_ case greatly--she had so much less to
resent, to brood over.

I took my trouble to Mr. Daly, after I had been out to the mad-house at
Blackwell's Island, and had gained some useful information from that
awful aggregation of human woe. He listened to Belot's description of
_Cora's_ beauty and its wrecking "scar"; he looked condemningly at the
Rousseil picture, and then asked me what I wanted to do.

I told him I wanted a dreadful scar--then I wanted to veil it always; and
he broke in with, "Then why have the scar, if it is to be veiled?"

But I hurried on: "My constant care to keep it covered will make people
imagine it a hundred times worse than it really is. Then when the veil is
torn off by main force, and they catch a glimpse of the horror, they will
not wonder that her already-tottering brain should give way under such a
blow to her vanity."

Mr. Daly studied over the matter silently for a few moments, then he
said: "Yes, you are right. That scar is a great fact