"Why should you vex yourself, mother? I have no dread of stage-fright. I shall be as cool as I am now. Don’t expect that I shall blunder in my part, or make mistakes otherwise—that is not what I mean. What I fear is, that the moment I go upon the stage, and see the men and women all around me, I shall feel that I am just like one of them, only a little lower in having to amuse them. I shall feel as if I ought to be ashamed of myself in imitating the real emotions of life." "You never had any of those fantastic notions before. Didn’t you use to pride yourself on your indifference to the people?" "I _used_ to." "What has changed you?" "My growing older," she replied, with a sad smile. "I begin to feel as if those things that make up acting had become part of my own life now, and that I had no business to burlesque them any more on the stage. I begin to wonder what the people will think of my lending myself to a series of tricks." And here she fell into a reverie, which Mrs. Christmas saw it was useless to interrupt. The worthy old woman was sorely puzzled and grieved by the apostacy of her most promising pupil, and ceased not to speculate on what subtle poison had been allowed to creep into her mind. Meanwhile the opening night had arrived. People had come back from the moors and Mont Blanc, and every place in the theatre had been taken. Mr. Melton already enjoyed his triumph by anticipation, and tried every means of keeping up Annie Brunel’s spirits. She was bound to achieve the most brilliant of all her successes, as he confidently told her. CHAPTER XXII. ROSALIND. "_Ah, mon bon petit public_, be kind to my leetel child!" says Achille Talma Dufard, when his daughter is about to go on the stage for the first time. The words were in the heart, if not on the lips, of Mrs. Christmas, as the kindly old woman busied herself in Annie Brunel’s dressing-room, and prepared her favourite for the coming crisis. She had a vague presentiment that it was to be a crisis, though she did not know why. By the time the inevitable farce was over, the house was full. Miss Featherstone, rushing downstairs to change her costume of a barmaid for that of ’Celia,’ brought word that all the critics were present, that Royalty was expected, and that her own particular young gentleman had laughed so heartily at the farce that she was sure he was in a good humour, and inclined to let bygones be bygones. "So you must cheer up," said Mrs. Christmas, blithely, when Nelly had gone; "you must cheer up, and do great things, my dear." "Am I not sufficiently cheerful, Lady Jane?" "Cheerful? Cheerful? Yes, perhaps cheerful. But you must forget all you have been saying about the people, and mind only your character, and put fire and spirit into it. Make them forget who _you_ are, my dear, and then you’ll only think of yourself as ’Rosalind.’ Isn’t your first cue ’_Be merry_’?"