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Updated: June 30, 2025
Stuart succeeded in diverting his attention to his latest picture, and the dinner flowed on pleasantly till the coffee was handed and the carriage announced. On their arrival at the theatre armed with Miss Bretherton's order, Mrs. Stuart's party found themselves shown into a large roomy box close to the stage too close, indeed, for purposes of seeing well.
Kendal thought it proved no more than that an extremely beautiful girl of irreproachable character, brought prominently before the public in any capacity whatever, is sure to stir the susceptible English heart, and that Isabel Bretherton's popularity was not one which would in the long run affect the stage at all.
Forbes turned up punctual to the moment, and radiant under the combined influence of the sunshine and of Miss Bretherton's presence; Wallace had made all the arrangements perfectly, and the six friends found themselves presently journeying along to Oxford, at that moderated speed which is all that a Sunday express can reach.
At any rate, I am clear that if a man has got hold of a fine work of art, as you have in that play, he has a duty to it and to the public. You are bound to see it brought out under the best possible conditions, and we all know that Miss Bretherton's acting, capped with Hawes's, would kill it, from the artistic point of view. 'Perfectly true, perfectly true, said Wallace.
He and the Bretherton party, however, had been going about together for several days, so that he and she had plenty of gossip in common. Miss Bretherton's enthusiasm about Venice is of a very naive, hot, outspoken kind. It seems to me that she is a very susceptible creature. She lives her life fast, and crowds into it a greater number of sensations than most people.
It had been nothing less than a settled foresight, a deep conviction, of Isabel Bretherton's failure! What a treachery! But yes, the vision perpetually before his eyes had been the vision of a dying fame, a waning celebrity, a forsaken and discrowned beauty! And from that abandonment and that failure he had dimly foreseen the rise and upspringing of new and indescribable joy.
The scene was so obviously beyond Miss Bretherton's resources that even the enthusiastic house, Kendal fancied, cooled down during the progress of it.
Before he left he paid a farewell call to Mrs. Stuart, who gave him full and enthusiastic accounts of Isabel Bretherton's last night, and informed him that her brother talked of following the Brethertons to Venice some time in August.
At the station Miss Bretherton's carriage was waiting; the party of gentlemen saw her and Mrs. Stuart, who insisted on taking her home, into it; the pale, smiling face bent forward; she waved her hand in response to the lifted hats, and she was gone. 'Well? said Wallace, with a world of inquiry in his voice, as he and Kendal turned eastward.
Stuart was happy, because she had for once induced Stuart to put away his papers and allow himself a holiday; it was Miss Bretherton's first sight of the genuine English country, and she was like a child among the gorse and the hawthorns, while Wallace and I amused our manly selves extremely well in befriending the most beautiful woman in the British Isles, in drawing her out and watching her strong naive impressions of things.
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