“How strange it is that we should both know him,” Muriel said, reflectively.
“Very. I can understand your desire for the dramatic profession if you have been under the spell of Leighton’s influence. He gave you lessons, you said?”
“Three times a week for the last two years and a half. I thought it wisest to prepare myself as much as possible; but I did not like to tell Mr. Gascoigne, the lawyer, that I was thinking of the stage. He knows that I can sing a little, and that I am wanting to come out by-and-bye.”
“It is but a step from the vocal to the dramatic stage,” he said, smiling a little. Then, very gravely: “I have lived so many years longer in the world than you, that you will possibly permit me to give you my opinion. For one absolutely alone in the world, as you are, of gentle birth, you will be cruelly exposed to fearful dangers, from which it will be next to impossible to escape.”
“But I am not so very young,” she said wistfully “and the Gascoignes will never lose sight of me, I think. I am going to live in Bloomsbury, with a very respectable woman and her husband who let lodgings, and I should pay her to accompany me to the theatre. She used to be one of the maids at the farm.
“What other can I do? I have about £70 a year of my own, which will just keep me from starving; barely that in London, but I detest the country. I cannot be a governess, nor serve in a shop. Mr. Leighton has given me two letters of introduction to the managers of the ‘Coliseum,’ and ‘Opera Comique.’”
“So, then he has a very high opinion of your powers or you would not have obtained those introductions.”
“To the two best theatres, owning the most critical of managers? But I would rather be condemned by them than praised by the inferior ones. Mr. Gascoigne has promised to come up and see me in three or four weeks, and I am to go down there for Easter. I suppose he thinks that I shall fail.”
They were nearing Charing Cross by this, and Muriel looked out at the densely packed houses.
“Is this your first visit to town?”