Preparation and practice had come but a short way; her part opened out, and she invented from moment to moment what to say and to do.

She had but one rule of art--to keep within bounds and not lose her head; certainly she might see for a week how far that would take her.

She said to herself, in her excitement, that it was perfectly simple: to bring about a difference, touch by touch, without letting either of the three, and least of all her father, so much as suspect her hand.

If they should suspect they would want a reason, and the humiliating truth was that she wasn't ready with a reason--not, that is, with what she would have called a reasonable one.

She thought of herself, instinctively, beautifully, as having dealt, all her life, at her father's side and by his example, only in reasonable reasons; and what she would really have been most ashamed of would be to produce for HIM, in this line, some inferior substitute.