‘Yes. Well, that was Isaacs, proprietor of the “Evening Scrutator.” A nasty beast, always smelling of cigars and rum-and-water. He hates me because I keep myself respectable, and he never suffers any one of his critics to say a good word about me.’ ‘Who are _they_, Mamzelle?’ ‘The critics? Tomfools who write in the papers, and don’t know good acting from bad, and if they did daren’t say so. Why, they praise Miss Harlington--who played “Princess Pretty pet” in the burlesque!’ ‘Oh, yes,’ cried Madeline, in rapture. ‘Her in the pink dress with the spangles and the flowers in her hair. Oh, wasn’t she lovely, Mamzelle?’ Mathilde tossed her head under the brush, and flushed With virtuous contempt. ‘A bandy-legged thing with a voice like a goat. Did you hear the creature sing? I wonder they don’t hiss her off the stage. But the men run after her, and she’s kept by an earl; and there she is every day in her victoria, driving in the Row among real ladies, while I must go down to rehearsal in the bus. It’s disgusting--that’s what it is. Do take care. Madeline--you’re brushing it all the wrong way.’ She added as an afterthought, less in real consideration for her hearer than as a parade of her own wrongs-- ‘Never you be an actress, child. Sweep a crossing first, or serve behind a counter, or do anything dreadful. The stage isn’t fit for any decent person, and so I’ve told Pa and Ma a thousand times.’ From this and from many other similar conversations, and from several subsequent visits to the theatre, both before and behind the scenes, Madeline began to acquire a precocious insight into some of the mysteries of life in London. She was clever and quick, and soon understood as much as was comprehensible to so pure a child. Mathilde de Berny, like many of her class, talked freely about things which might well have been nameless, and never seemed to reflect that the listener was so young. Fortunately, Madeline’s perfect innocence and simplicity, combined with her real strength of character, kept her pure from taint; but by slow degrees the glory was beginning to depart from the great world of which she knew so little. Not at all too soon White saw that Madeline was in danger of degeneration. He was a shrewd fellow, and understood that Mathilde de Berny, though a perfectly virtuous young woman, was not really the best companion she could have found. It irritated him too, at last, to see the child sinking into a mere appendage of the actress and general drudge of the house. ‘I must get her away,’ he said to himself, ‘before they spoil her altogether. They neglect her and impose upon her, and teach her things she ought not to know. I don’t want Fred’s child to grow into a little slattern, with the education, and perhaps the moral instinct, of a ballet-girl. They make a small parasite of her, and she goes errands; they’ve even got in the habit of sending her for the beer. I’ll put a stop to it at once.’