e was not a scrap of coquetry or
self-consciousness, she would pass into a sudden outburst of anger as to
the impertinence of English rich people--the impertinence of rich
millionaires who have tried once or twice to "order" her for their
evening parties as they would order their ices, or the impertinence of
the young "swell about town" who thinks she has nothing to do behind the
scenes but receive his visits and provide him with entertainment. And, as
the quick impetuous words came rushing out, you felt that here for once
was a woman speaking her real mind to you, and that with a flashing eye
and curving lip, an inborn grace and energy which made every word
memorable. If she would but look like that or speak like that on the
stage! But there, of course, is the rub. The whole difficulty of art
consists in losing your own personality, so to speak, and finding it
again transformed, and it is a difficulty which Miss Bretherton has never
even understood.

'After this impression of spontaneity and natural force, I think what
struck me most was the physical effect London has already exercised upon
her in six weeks. She looks superbly sound and healthy; she is tall and
fully developed, and her colour, for all its delicacy, is pure and
glowing. But, after all, she was born in a languid tropical climate, and
it is the nervous strain, the rush, the incessant occupation of London
which seem to be telling upon her. She gave me two or three times a
painful impression of fatigue on Friday--fatigue and something like
depression. After twenty minutes' talk she threw herself back against the
iron pillar behind her, her White Lady's hood framing a face so pale and
drooping that we all got up to go, feeling that it was cruelty to keep
her up a minute longer. Mrs. Stuart asked her about her Sundays, and
whether she ever got out of town. "Oh," she said, with a sigh and a look
at her uncle, who was standing near, "I think Sunday is the hardest day
of all. It is our 'at home' day, and such crowds come--just to look at
me, I suppose, for I cannot talk to a quarter of them." Whereupon Mr.
Worrall said in his bland commercial way that society had its burdens as
well as its pleasures, and that his dear niece could hardly escape her
social duties after the flattering manner in which London had welcomed
her. Miss Bretherton answered, with a sort of languid rebellion, that her
social duties would soon be the death of her. But evidently she is very
d