‘You can’t learn to _act_, but you can learn to _speak_ beautifully; life teaches you that, more than all the theatres in the world.’ He looked at her in surprise. ‘I don’t know, of course, but that’s my idea of things,’ she said smiling. ‘And how do you study?’ ‘I learn parts, and say them over and over again to myself until I get just the sound I want into my voice.’ ‘What parts? Juliet?’ ‘Well, Beatrice in _The Cenci_ is the one I like best. I don’t like Juliet; all that sort of sentiment is such a delusion, you know. I can’t pretend to believe in it; but there is a real, terrible tragedy in Beatrice, you can’t help feeling it; it takes hold of you, you can’t escape it.’ ‘_The Cenci_ is very improper, isn’t it?’ ‘I dare say; I just read the play through once to understand the part of Beatrice, I forget about the details. I only know the fact that she has a real, terrible wrong done her, which makes her loathe herself and lose her wits for a while, that she revenges it, and is beheaded for her crime just as life had become possible for her, when the father that had poisoned the very air in which she grew up had ceased to live. It seems to me that is the only really tragic part ever written for a woman. Lady Macbeth was a fiend, Juliet a baby.’ ‘Will you read some of it to me?’ ‘No. I can’t bear reading in a room, it is so amateurish.’ ‘But just quietly, to one person, surely that is different.’ ‘Well, perhaps I will. No, I’ll tell you what; if you like to come down to the river mead, I will bring out the book and read a little of it this afternoon. Now go; I don’t want the girl to see us come in together.’ He obediently went on ahead. She sat on a stile for a moment or two thinking. ‘Suppose I go off; suppose I get an engagement, what then?’ Lord Kirkdale looked round as he turned the corner, which took him out of her sight. And she wondered why he looked so heavy and sheepish, and foolish. In case my reader should get a wrong impression of Lord Kirkdale, they must be here informed that he was an extremely well made young man, six feet one in height, thirteen stone in weight, with fair hair and ruddy complexion; there was nothing comic or unseemly about his appearance, but to a woman who had taken it into her head to adore the type of man represented by the Dancing Faun, no Hercules, however laboriously devoted, need apply. * * * * * ‘Who is this dreadful ineligible man Robert tells me was dining here the other night?’ said Maisy. She had been lunching at Davies Street with her mother and sister, and the three were sitting in the drawing-room. ‘I don’t think you need trouble about his being detrimental, unless it is on mamma’s account; he devotes himself entirely to her,’ said Geraldine. Lady Kirkdale laughed. ‘I was telling Geraldine the other day, that in a few seasons no woman this side of fifty will have a chance in society.’ ‘I wonder what the meaning of it is,’ said Maisy.