set them
right; carrying the people along with her in a perfect whirlwind, and
never waiting for the applause. The whole thing was over twenty minutes
sooner than the time we had calculated on. She carried it through to the
end, and fainted on the waiting-room sofa a minute after the curtain
was down. The music-seller having taken leave of his senses from sheer
astonishment, and I having no evening costume to appear in, we sent the
doctor to make the necessary apology to the public, who were calling for
her till the place rang again. I prompted our medical orator with a neat
speech from behind the curtain; and I never heard such applause, from
such a comparatively small audience, before in my life. I felt the
tribute--I felt it deeply. Fourteen years ago I scraped together the
wretched means of existence in this very town by reading the newspaper
(with explanatory comments) to the company at a public-house. And now
here I am at the top of the tree.

It is needless to say that my first proceeding was to bowl out the
music-seller on the spot. He called the next morning, no doubt with
a liberal proposal for extending the engagement beyond Derby and
Nottingham. My niece was described as not well enough to see him; and,
when he asked for me, he was told I was not up. I happened to be at that
moment engaged in putting the case pathetically to our gifted Magdalen.
Her answer was in the highest degree satisfactory. She would permanently
engage herself to nobody--least of all to a man who had taken sordid
advantage of her position and mine. She would be her own mistress, and
share the profits with me, while she wanted money, and while it suited
her to go on. So far so good. But the reason she added next, for her
flattering preference of myself, was less to my taste. "The music-seller
is not the man whom I employ to make my inquiries," she said. "You are
the man." I don't like her steadily remembering those inquiries, in the
first bewilderment of her success. It looks ill for the future; it looks
infernally ill for the future.

V.

_Chronicle for January, 1847._

She has shown the cloven foot already. I begin to be a little afraid of
her.

On the conclusion of the Nottingham engagement (the results of
which more than equaled the results at Derby), I proposed taking the
entertainment next--now we had got it into our own hands--to Newark.
Miss Vanstone raised no objection until we came to the question of time,
when she ama