But no; misfortune stalks beside her from week's beginning to week's
end.

After her husband has been found guilty of murder, which is about the
least thing that can ever happen to him, and her white-haired father
has become a bankrupt and has died of a broken heart, and the home of
her childhood has been sold up, then her infant goes and contracts a
lingering fever.

She weeps a good deal during the course of her troubles, which we
suppose is only natural enough, poor woman. But it is depressing from
the point of view of the audience, and we almost wish before the
evening is out that she had not got quite so much trouble.

It is over the child that she does most of her weeping. The child has
a damp time of it altogether. We sometimes wonder that it never
catches rheumatism.

She is very good, is the stage heroine. The comic man expresses a
belief that she is a born angel. She reproves him for this with a
tearful smile (it wouldn't be her smile if it wasn't tearful).

"Oh, no," she says (sadly of course); "I have many, many faults."

We rather wish that she would show them a little more. Her excessive
goodness seems somehow to pall upon us. Our only consolation while
watching her is that there are not many good women off the stage.
Life is bad enough as it is; if there were many women in real life as
good as the stage heroine, it would be unbearable.