Her pretty lips smiled on him as they had smiled on no one else that night; and when she held out some cards to be chosen from, she left unnoticed the eager hands extended on either side of her, and presented them to Valentine only.
He saw the small fingers trembling as they held the cards; he saw the delicate little shoulders and the poor frail neck and chest bedizened with tawdry mock jewelry and spangles; he saw the innocent young face, whose pure beauty no soil of stage paint could disfigure, with the smile still on the parted lips, but with a patient forlornness in the sad blue eyes, as if the seeing-sense that was left, mourned always for the hearing and speaking senses that were gone--he marked all these things in an instant, and felt that his heart was sinking as he looked.

A dimness stole over his sight; a suffocating sensation oppressed his breathing; the lights in the circus danced and mingled together; he bent down over the child's hand, and took it in his own; twice kissed it fervently; then, to the utter amazement of the laughing crowd about him, rose up suddenly, and forced his way out as if he had been flying for his life.
There was a momentary confusion among the audience.

But Mr.Jubber was too old an adept in stage-business of all kinds not to know how to stop the growing tumult directly, and turn it into universal applause.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried, with a deep theatrical quiver in his voice--"I implore you to be seated, and to excuse the conduct of the party who has just absented himself.

The talent of the Mysterious Foundling has overcome people in that way in every town of England.

Do I err in believing that a Rubbleford audience can make kind allowances for their weaker fellow-creatures?
Thanks, a thousand thanks in the name of this darling and talented child, for your cordial, your generous, your affectionate, your inestimable reception of her exertions to-night!" With this peroration Mr.Jubber took his pupil out of the ring, amid the most vehement cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs.