lay their equal? There are not many
of them better looking; are there any cleverer or better informed? Even
those Oxford boys said you looked like an empress. If insult will crush
you, girl, you 've got little of _my_ blood in you."

Lizzy's face flushed scarlet, and her eyes glittered wildly, as they
seemed to say, "Have no fears on that score." Then, suddenly changing to
an ashy pallor, and in a voice trembling with intense feeling, she said:
"But why seek out an existence of struggle and conflict? It is for me
and my welfare that all your anxieties are exercised. Is it not possible
that these can be promoted without the dangerous risk of this ambition?
You know life well; tell me, then, are there not some paths a woman may
tread for independence, and yet cause no blush to those who love her
best? Of the acquirements you have bestowed upon me, are there not some
which could be turned to this account? I could be a governess."

"Do you know what a governess is, girl?--a servant in the garb of a
lady; one whose mind has been cultivated, not to form resources for
herself, but to be drained and drawn on by others. They used to kill a
serf, in the middle ages, that a noble might warm his feet in the hot
entrails; our modern civilization is satisfied by driving many a poor
girl crazy, to cram some stupid numbskull with a semblance of knowledge.
You shall not be a governess."

"There is the stage, then," cried she. "I'm vain enough to imagine I
should succeed there."

"I'll not hear of it," broke in Davis, passionately. "If I was certain
you could act like Siddons herself, you should not walk the boards. _I_
know what a theatre is. I know the life of coarse familiarity it leads
to. The corps is a family gathered together like what jockeys call 'a
scratch team,'--a wheeler here, and a leader there, with just smartness
enough to soar above the level of a dull audience, crammed with the
light jest of low comedy, and steered by no higher ambition than a
crowded benefit, or a junketing at Greenwich. How would _you_ consort
with these people?"

"Still, if I achieved success--"

"I won't have it,--that's enough. I tell you, girl, that there is but
one course for _you_. You must be declared winner at the stand-house
before you have been seen on the ground. If you have to run the gauntlet
through all the slanders and stories they will rake up of _me_,--if,
before you reach the goal, you have to fight all the lost battles of
_my