She turned away from him as she spoke, leaving him with a decided feeling of having been taken at a disadvantage. His call followed almost immediately, so he had no time to reply; but the remembrance of her mockery remained with him, and added a touch of bitterness and reality to the situations of the play, in which he and she bore reversed relations to those of real life.
The drama selected by Esther Newbold, _The Ladies' Battle_, is too well-known and too great a favourite to require description. Perhaps of all drawing-room comedies it is the most pleasing and the most comprehensive. Those who have seen the foremost actresses of our day personate the young and beautiful Countess d'Autreval--who is not ashamed, though fully conscious, of her love for Henri de Flavigneul, and who bravely relinquishes it in favour of her girlish niece, Léonie de Villegontier--will remember what scope can be shown in the development of that character, whose fundamental attributes seem at first sight to be those of impulse and self-gratification.
The scenes moved on with magic smoothness and completeness, and gradually, as the interest grew and deepened, the audience began to realise that it was upon Miss Hildreth as the Countess, and Mr. Tremain as Henri, that the chief influence and importance of the play culminated. The undercurrent of suppressed antagonism that existed between them communicated itself to the onlookers with a subtle, yet potent power; while to those who could read the writing between the lines, the situations assumed a potential gravity and significance.
From the moment of the Countess's soliloquy, "Now to be more than woman," when, recognising her growing love for the young soldier, she consults her looking-glass as the oracle which is to encourage or dissuade her from entering the lists against Léonie, and then lays it down with the significant line, "Ah, it has deceived so many!" to her final act of renunciation, Patricia carried the house with her, and left no loophole for any anti-interest or climax.
Baby Leonard made a charming Léonie. Her innocent face and unsophisticated manner were a capital study and a clever following of nature; but it was on Patricia Hildreth that the sympathy and sentiment centred, and there arose almost a cry of disappointment when the curtain dropped finally upon Léonie's happiness, at the price of the nobler nature's self-sacrifice. Even her fellow actors felt her potency, and Philip most of all.