heroine.

"Pshaw!" said our good-humoured manager, "you do not know what you
are talking about. Juliet! You have not the depth, the temperament,
the experience for a Juliet. She had more knowledge of life at
thirteen than most of our English maids have at thirty. To represent
Juliet correctly an actress must have the face and figure of a young
girl, with the heart and mind of a woman, and of a woman who has
suffered."

"And have I not suffered? Do you think because you see me tripping
through some foolish, insipid _rôle_ that I am capable of nothing
better? Give me a chance and see what I can do."

"Oh! bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,"

I began, and declaimed the speech with such despairing vigour that
our manager was impressed.

Well, the end of it was that he yielded to my suggestion.

It seemed a prosperous time to float a new Juliet. At a
neighbouring theatre a lovely foreign actress was playing the part
nightly to crowded houses. We might get some of the overflow, or the
public would come for the sake of comparing native with imported
talent. Oh! the faces of my traducers, who had said, "Those
Gascoigne girls have no feeling for art," when it was known that they
were out of the bill, and that Sybil Gascoigne was to play
Shakespeare. I absolutely forgot Jack for one moment. But the next,
my grief, my desolation, were present with me with more acuteness