drama. She
listened with an eagerness which both the readers amusedly took heed
of, as the successive princes of Morocco and Arragon made their trial:
the doctor avowing by the way, that he thought he should have "assumed
desert" as the latter prince did, and received the fool's head for his
pains. Then they came to the beautiful "casket scene." The doctor had
somehow from the beginning left Portia in Mr. Linden's hands; and now
gave with great truth and gracefulness the very graceful words of her
successful suitor. He could put truth into these, and did, and
accordingly read beautifully; well heard, for the play of Faith's
varying face shewed she went along thoroughly with all the fine turns
of thought and feeling; here and elsewhere. But how well and how
delicately Mr. Linden gave Portia! That Dr. Harrison could not have
done; the parts had fallen out happily, whether by chance or design.
Her ladylike and coy play with words--her transparent veil of delicate
shifting turns of expression--contriving to say all and yet as if she
would say nothing--were rendered by the reader with a grace of tone
every way fit to them. Faith's eye ceased to look at anybody, and her
colour flitted, as this scene went on; and when Portia's address to her
fortunate wooer was reached--that very noble and dignified declaration
of her woman's mind, when she certainly pulled off her gloves, wherever
else she might wear them;--Faith turned her face quite away from the
readers and with the cheek she could not hide sheltered by her hand--as
well as her hand could--she let nobody but the fire and Mrs. Derrick
see what a flush covered the other. Very incautious in Faith, but it
was the best she could do. And the varied interests that immediately
followed, of Antonio's danger and deliverance, gradually brought her
head round again and accounted sufficiently for the colour with which
her cheeks still burned. The Merchant of Venice was not the only play
enacting that evening; and the temptation to break in upon the one,
made the doctor, as often as he could, break off the other; though the
interest of the plot for a while gave him little chance.

"So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

"Do you suppose, Miss Derrick," said Dr. Harrison with his look of
amused pleasure,--"that is because the world is so dark?--or because
the effects of the good deed reach to such a distance?"

"Both," said Faith immediately.

"You think the world is so bad?