She saw all her own little formal peculiarities of manner and movement unblushingly reproduced--and even the very tone of her voice so accurately mimicked from time to time, that the accents startled her as if she was speaking herself, with an echo on the stage.

The effect of this cool appropriation of Norah's identity to theatrical purposes on the audience--who only saw results--asserted itself in a storm of applause on Magdalen's exit.

She had won two incontestable triumphs in her first scene.

By a dexterous piece of mimicry, she had made a living reality of one of the most insipid characters in the English drama; and she had roused to enthusiasm an audience of two hundred exiles from the blessings of ventilation, all simmering together in their own animal heat.

Under the circumstances, where is the actress by profession who could have done much more?
But the event of the evening was still to come.