let it have her at all,
absolutely on her own terms: a picture which led our young man to ask
himself with a helplessness that was not exempt, as he perfectly knew,
from absurdity, what part _he_ should find himself playing in such a
contest and if it would be reserved to him to be the more ridiculous as
a peacemaker or as a heavy backer.

"She might know any one she would, and the only person she appears to
take any pleasure in is that dreadful Miss Rover," Mrs. Rooth whimpered
to him more than once--leading him thus to recognise in the young lady
so designated the principal complication of Balaklava Place. Miss Rover
was a little actress who played at Miriam's theatre, combining with an
unusual aptitude for delicate comedy a less exceptional absence of
rigour in private life. She was pretty and quick and brave, and had a
fineness that Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate
as rare. She had no control of her inclinations, yet sometimes they were
wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed for her beautiful
colleague, whom she admired not only as an ornament of the profession
but as a being altogether of a more fortunate essence. She had had an
idea that real ladies were "nasty," but Miriam was not nasty, and who
could gainsay that Miriam was a real lady? The girl justified herself to
her patron from Paris, who had found no fault with her; she knew how
much her mother feared the proper world wouldn't come in if they knew
that the improper, in the person of pretty Miss Rover, was on the
ground. What did she care who came and who didn't, and what was to be
gained by receiving half the snobs in London? People would have to take
her exactly as they found her--that they would have to learn; and they
would be much mistaken if they thought her capable of turning snob too
for the sake of their sweet company. She didn't pretend to be anything
but what she meant to be, the best general actress of her time; and what
had that to do with her seeing or not seeing a poor ignorant girl who
had loved--well, she needn't say what Fanny had done. They had met in
the way of business; she didn't say she would have run after her. She
had liked her because she wasn't a slick, and when Fanny Rover had asked
her quite wistfully if she mightn't come and see her and like her she
hadn't bristled with scandalised virtue. Miss Rover wasn't a bit more
stupid or more ill-natured than any one else; it would be time enough to
s