ter will escape from that," Peter Sherringham
was moved to interpose.

"Oh if _you_ could help her!" said the lady with a world of longing.

"She has certainly all the qualities that strike the eye," Peter
returned.

"You're _most_ kind, sir!" Mrs. Rooth declared, elegantly draping
herself.

"She knows Celimene; I've heard her do Celimene," Gabriel Nash said to
Madame Carre".

"And she knows Juliet, she knows Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra," added Mrs.
Rooth.

"_Voyons_, my dear child, do you wish to work for the French stage or
for the English?" the old actress demanded.

"Ours would have sore need of you, Miss Rooth," Sherringham gallantly
threw off.

"Could you speak to any one in London--could you introduce her?" her
mother eagerly asked.

"Dear madam, I must hear her first, and hear what Madame Carre says."

"She has a voice of rare beauty, and I understand voices," said Mrs.
Rooth.

"Ah then if she has intelligence she has every gift."

"She has a most poetic mind," the old lady went on.

"I should like to paint her portrait; she's made for that," Nick Dormer
ventured to observe to Mrs. Rooth; partly because struck with the girl's
suitability for sitting, partly to mitigate the crudity of inexpressive
spectatorship.

"So all the artists say. I've had three or four heads of her, if you
would like to see them: she has been done in several styles. If you were
to do her I'm sure it would make her celebrated."

"And me too," Nick easily laughed.

"It would indeed--a member of Parliament!" Nash declared.

"Ah, I have the honour----?" murmured Mrs. Rooth, looking gratified and
mystified.

Nick explained that she had no honour at all, and meanwhile Madame Carre
had been questioning the girl "_Chere madame_, I can do nothing with
your daughter: she knows too much!" she broke out. "It's a pity, because
I like to catch them wild."

"Oh she's wild enough, if that's all! And that's the very point, the
question of where to try," Mrs. Rooth went on. "Into what do I launch
her--upon what dangerous stormy sea? I've thought of it so anxiously."

"Try here--try the French public: they're so much the most serious,"
said Gabriel Nash.

"Ah no, try the English: there's such a rare opening!" Sherringham urged
in quick opposition.

"Oh it isn't the public, dear gentlemen. It's the private side, the
other people--it's the life, it's the moral atmosphere."

"_Je ne connais qu'une scene,--la notre_," Madame Carre