"I must harden myself--and I will! Sit down again and see me act." "Bravo!" cried the captain.

"Dash at it, my beauty--and it's done!" She dashed at it, with a mad defiance of herself--with a raised voice, and a glow like fever in her cheeks.

All the artless, girlish charm of the performance in happier and better days was gone.

The native dramatic capacity that was in her came, hard and bold, to the surface, stripped of every softening allurement which had once adorned it.

She would have saddened and disappointed a man with any delicacy of feeling.