"
"It's what I shall have to do. I shall be old before it's produced."
"I shall be old very soon if it isn't!" Mrs. Alsager cried. "I know
one or two of them," she mused.
"Do you mean you would speak to them?"
"The thing is to get them to read it. I could do that."
"That's the utmost I ask. But it's even for that I shall have to
wait."
She looked at him with kind sisterly eyes. "You sha'n't wait."
"Ah, you dear lady!" Wayworth murmured.
"That is YOU may, but _I_ won't! Will you leave me your copy?" she
went on, turning the pages again.
"Certainly; I have another." Standing near him she read to herself a
passage here and there; then, in her sweet voice, she read some of
them out. "Oh, if YOU were only an actress!" the young man
exclaimed.
"That's the last thing I am. There's no comedy in ME!"
She had never appeared to Wayworth so much his good genius. "Is
there any tragedy?" he asked, with the levity of complete confidence.
She turned away from him, at this, with a strange and charming laugh
and a "Perhaps that will be for you to determine!" But before he
could disclaim such a responsibility she had faced him again and was
talking about Nona Vincent as if she had been the most interesting of
their friends and her situation at that moment an irresistible appeal
to their sympathy.
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