My Brilliant Career

By the next morning, Sybylla’s elation passes. “You hideous animal,” she says in the mirror. “Your peerless conceit does you credit” (29). At breakfast, she mentions Everard’s encouragement to pursue a life on stage, and her grandmother dismisses the idea of her having a career “instead of being a good wife and mother and attending to a home” (30). Everard Grey arrives. He promises to secure a talent agent and pledges his love. Sybylla refuses: “There is no such thing as love” (33).

Everard departs the next morning.

Frank Hawden, who runs the farm, approaches Sybylla and proposes to her, telling her that when he reaches 24 he will inherit his family’s farm in England. Sybylla dismisses the idea as a “screaming farce” (33). Frank complains to her grandmother who tells Sybylla that she could do much worse than Frank Hawden. Sybylla dismisses Hawden as no “fit husband” (34). She would not listen to “professions of love from an angel” (35), much less from a man who works with livestock.

The next day, while on a ladder pulling lemons from a tree, Sybylla meets Harry Beechum, her “first, last and only real sweetheart” (35).