For the few shillings she received for her work at the theater were not enough to pay her modest expenses for food and lodging without her drawing upon the small sum she had brought with her from the Grange; William’s money she had resolved not to touch except in case of utmost need. So she tried her strength by living too simply, while she passed, in spite of herself, at the theater as a “rich” lady, who “came behind” for a freak. She had clothing enough to last for some time, and before the end of the summer she was lucky in being able to sell a short story; and then, after being for a few weeks out of work and in debt, and almost in danger of absolute want, she got an engagement at a salary which was just enough to live upon, but with no chance of more than a few lines to speak. And this was her life, with now and then a hope of something better to do, followed always by disappointment and sometimes by despair for nearly three years, at the end of which time she was still appearing at a fashionable comedy theater, where she had been figuring in the programmes for some months on the last line of the list of characters, thus--“Maid, Miss Langton.” And the brilliant future she had pictured once for herself seemed further away than ever. For she had by this time mastered some of the secrets of success on the stage. The highest success, she still knew, fell only to the highest talent; and this belief, which was directly against the creed of most of her companions, she held to the end. It was all luck, they said. It was chiefly luck, she thought too--the luck of being somebody’s son or somebody’s daughter, of having good looks and bad principles or wealthy friends, of being by chance on the right spot at the right time; and luck had been against her. Disappointment, too, and weary, weary waiting had taken the bloom off her beauty, which was of a type depending very much on expression; and the look her face habitually wore now was that of a woman whom cares and failures and struggles with necessity had reduced to an automaton. Yet in some respects her position would not have been an unenviable one to a less ambitious woman. The conscientious care which had formerly made her a good governess, and later an almost too submissive wife to her careless husband, made her now fill her very unimportant _roles_ with an attention to the most trifling details which obtained for her the consideration of the authorities in the theater, although it was of course not possible that her efforts to be artistic in her representation of monosyllabic maids should attract the attention of the general public or of the critics in front. And her salary, though not high, was now sufficient to keep her in comfort, which might have been greater, had she been more economical. So that the privilege of thinking herself a martyr was almost out of her reach.