She was intelligent, but she cried aloud for training, and the
training was so absent that the intelligence had only a fraction of
its effect. She was like a knife without an edge--good steel that
had never been sharpened; she hacked away at her hard dramatic loaf,
she couldn't cut it smooth.



CHAPTER II.



"Certainly my leading lady won't make Nona much like YOU!" Wayworth
one day gloomily remarked to Mrs. Alsager. There were days when the
prospect seemed to him awful.

"So much the better. There's no necessity for that."

"I wish you'd train her a little--you could so easily," the young man
went on; in response to which Mrs. Alsager requested him not to make
such cruel fun of her. But she was curious about the girl, wanted to
hear of her character, her private situation, how she lived and
where, seemed indeed desirous to befriend her. Wayworth might not
have known much about the private situation of Miss Violet Grey, but,
as it happened, he was able, by the time his play had been three
weeks in rehearsal, to supply information on such points. She was a
charming, exemplary person, educated, cultivated, with highly modern
tastes, an excellent musician. She had lost her parents and was very
much alone in the world, her only two relations being a sister, who
was married to a civil servant (in a highly responsible post) in