VI.
Chronicle for February.
Practice has now given my fair relative the confidence which I predicted
would come with time. Her knack of disguising her own identity in
the impersonation of different characters so completely staggers her
audiences that the same people come twice over to find out how she does
it. It is the amiable defect of the English public never to know when
they have had enough of a good thing. They actually try to encore one
of her characters—an old north-country lady; modeled on that honored
preceptress in the late Mr. Vanstone's family to whom I presented myself
at Combe-Raven. This particular performance fairly amazes the people. I
don't wonder at it. Such an extraordinary assumption of age by a girl of
nineteen has never been seen in public before, in the whole course of my
theatrical experience.
I find myself writing in a lower tone than usual; I miss my own dash of
humor. The fact is, I am depressed about the future. In the very height
of our prosperity my perverse pupil sticks to her trumpery family
quarrel. I feel myself at the mercy of the first whim in the Vanstone
direction which may come into her head—I, the architect of her
fortunes. Too bad; upon my soul, too bad.
She has acted already on the inquiries which she forced me to make for
her. She has written two letters to Mr. Michael Vanstone.
To the first letter no answer came. To the second a reply was received. Her infernal cleverness put an obstacle I had not expected in the way of my intercepting it. Later in the day, after she had herself opened and read the answer, I laid another trap for her. It just succeeded, and no more. I had half a minute to look into the envelope in her absence. It contained nothing but her own letter returned. She is not the girl to put up quietly with such an insult as this. Mischief will come of it—Mischief to Michael Vanstone—which is of no earthly consequence: mischief to Me—which is a truly serious matter.