“And when you returned to your home you were not many hours under its roof before you were strutting about feeling yourself to be decked out in the fine clothes which you had seen that woman wear in the playhouse?”
“You have been talking to someone—was it Jake Pullsford? But how could he have known? Oh, sir; you seem to have in yourself a power equal to that of the water-finder's wand, only surer by a good measure.”
“And you saw no evil in the playhouse?” he said gently.
“I do not want to go again, Mr. Wesley,” she said. “But indeed I dare not say that I saw any of the wickedness that I have heard of, in the theatre.”
“What, are you not in yourself an example of the evil?” said he.
“What—I, sir? Surely not, Mr. Wesley. Whatever you may have heard you could hear nothing against me,” she cried, somewhat indignantly.
Her indignation lent her boldness and she turned to him, saying:
“I affirm, sir, and I am not ashamed to do so, that I saw nothing of evil in the playhouse, and I made up my mind that instead of spending my days hidden away in a lonely village far from all the pleasures of life, I would try my fortune as an actress. I believe that I have some gift of mimicry—my ladies told me so. Why, sir, you allowed that my shrieks frightened you outside the Mill.”
“Child, your feet are on a path perilous,” said he. “You were indignant when I said that you were in yourself an example of the evil of going to the playhouse. Every word that you have spoken since has gone to prove the truth of my assertion. Do you say that the unsettling of your mind is no evil due to your visits to the playhouse—the unsettling of your mind, the discontent at your homely and virtuous surroundings, the arousing of a foolish vanity in your heart and the determination to take a step that would mean inevitable ruin to such as you—ruin and the breaking of your father's heart?”
He spoke calmly, and in his voice there was more than a suggestion of sorrow.