“Really, one would say you were a queen speaking to a subject instead of an actress—”
“Honored with the attentions of a gentleman, you would add, sir,” she interrupted, quite calmly.
“As you please.”
“Pray speak to me no more, sir. I forget my part, and the audience are looking at you.”
“Let them.”
“I see some angry faces,” said the young woman; “they do not understand the fashions of London, sir.”
“What care I.”
“Please release my sleeve, sir—that is my line.”
The gallery uttered a prolonged hiss as Portia disengaged her arm. Mr. Effingham turned around and looked up to the gallery from which the hiss came; this glance of haughty defiance might have provoked another exhibition of the same sort, but Portia at that moment commenced her speech.
Thereafter the young woman came no more near Mr. Effingham, and treated that gentleman’s moody glances with supreme disregard. What was going on in Mr. Effingham’s mind, and why did he lose some of his careless listlessness, when, clasping her beautiful hands, the lovely girl, raising her eyes to heaven like one of the old Italian pictures, uttered that sublime discourse on the “quality of mercy”; and how did it happen that she sobbed, almost, in that tender, magical voice: