Her Faithful Knight — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

148 Passion and Poetry. As to the Hon. Darcy, he bore his failure in sufficiently light-hearted fashion, and stoutly declared that the critics were all wrong. “There’s no rant and fustian in my play; it soars beyond the money-grubbing common-places of their dreary every- day business; that’s why they condemn it,” he said. He was really considerably disappointed in that his work had completely failed to shock those who had seen it, and had only succeeded in boring them. “Dorothy Knight is perfect,’ he maintained; “a poem in motion. Her very ignorance of acting constitutes her greatest charm. Everything she does is so simple and ~ natural.” He sat in front every night in different parts of the almost empty houses, leaning back in his seat and gazing steadfastly upon his leading lady. Every night he sent fresh bouquets to her dressing-room, always without a name, so that Dorothy could keep the flowers with a light conscience. And Dorothy, who loved flowers, filled her shabby lodgings with them, and wished they would stand the railway journey to London just as they were, and picked out the best to pack in cardboard-boxes and send them to her sister lying ill in Lockhart Cottages. “I am getting on capitally, darling,” she wrote. “Flowers every night. Nurse tells me the roses arrived quite fresh. To-morrow I will send you some more.” Meantime she was very far from hopeful. Brighton confirmed the verdict of Hastings, and the chief paper there went so far as to refrain from criticising her per- formance, as “the subject was too painful.” Under these depressing circumstances, and the fact that she knew the entire company were laughing at her, Dorothy acted, if possible, worse than ever. ‘Then a London evening paper began to circulate in the theatre, in which a long and highly laudatory notice of “Love’s Right” appeared, spe- CoOmicbooks (S@)