Smuggler's Wife, or the European damsel carried off by Indians, or some
other thrilling elemental personage of the kind. The _White Lady_ was,
apparently, her first introduction to a more complicated order of play.
It is extraordinary, when one comes to think of it, how little positive
dramatic knowledge she must have! She knows some Shakespeare, I think--at
least, she mentions two or three plays--and I gather from something she.
said that she is now making the inevitable study of Juliet that every
actress makes sooner or later; but Sheridan, Goldsmith, and, of course,
all the French people, are mere names to her. When I think of the minute
exhaustive training our Paris actors go through, and compare it with such
a state of nature as hers, I am amazed at what she has done! For, after
all, you know, she must be able to act to some extent; she must know a
great deal more of her business than you and I suspect, or she could not
get on at all.'

* * * * *

'_August_ 16.

'It is almost a week, I see, since I wrote to you last. During that time
we have seen a great deal more of Miss Bretherton, sometimes in company
with her belongings, sometimes without them, and my impressions of her
have ripened very fast. Oh, my dear Eustace, you have been hasty,--all
the world has been hasty! Isabel Bretherton's _real_ self is only now
coming to the front, and it is a self which, as I say to myself with
astonishment, not even your keen eyes have ever seen--hardly suspected
even. Should I, myself a woman, have been as blind to a woman's
capabilities, I wonder? Very likely! These sudden rich developments of
youth are often beyond all calculation.