Her Faithful Knight — page 134: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

130 Darcy’s Sympathy. “And do you tell her about every little incident at re- hearsal, about the people you meet in the company, and so on?” he asked, with some curiosity. | “Oh, no! I hardly mention the theatre at all,” she re- plied. She could not explain to him that she feared lest any al- lusion to her theatrical surroundings might bring the bit- ter past all too clearly before her sister’s mind. “Indeed, Mr. Darcy,” she added, “I am not so proud of my performance that I should be likely to talk about it. I am afraid that everybody thinks I am dreadful, and I suppose I am.” “You are perfect—quite perfect as Zara!’’ he exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘Entirely my ideal. And I am the au- thor, and I ought to know. I admit to you, Miss Knight, that it was my sympathy with you in your evident distress, and my desire to atone for any wrong or trouble worked against you by my scoundrelly connection, Sergius Tre- velyan, that first induced me to engage you for this tour. But your reading of the part of my heroine is so entirely to my liking that I consider your engagement one of the happiest inspirations of my life.” Dorothy flushed with pleasure. “Tt is very good of you,” she said simply, “especially as I have several times thought I ought to resign the part, as I seem to put everybody out so dreadfully, and seem somehow to be so out of key with the whole thing.” “That is because you are refined and unconventional, as Zara should be. Look at the way in which that Kean from the Surrey side, Ernest Devine, gets what he calls his ‘effects’-—by unnatural pauses and false.emphasis and absurd exaggeration. Nothing could ever induce me to act myself, as I consider it a monkey practice, beneath the attention of men of thought and education. ‘The author is everything, the actor nothing but a living, painted up- COLNMUC LOK) “S) (S@)