"Perhaps I shall not feel all your earnestness, for there is no hope in the future for me, with or without consent. I can never turn back to the past, though I am not villain enough to lay a heart which contains the image of another at any woman's feet, without giving her a full knowledge of that which has gone before. The love which I confess to you, Lady Clara, was put resolutely behind me before we met."
Quick as thought a suspicion flashed through the girl's brain. She turned her eyes full upon the handsome head and face of the young man, and examined his features keenly. His hat was off; he was bending earnestly toward her.
"Lord Hilton, you sat in a box in the opera next to us on the night when that young American singer broke down. I remember your head now. You were leaning from the box when she fainted; her eyes were turned upon you as she fell. She is the woman you love."
"Say whom I loved, and Heaven knows I did love her; but she fled from me without a word, to expose herself upon that stage. I thought her the daughter of a respectable man, at least; when I am told in every club-house, she is the nameless child of that woman, Olympia. I would not believe it, till the actress confirmed the story with her own lips; then I learned that her home was with this woman, and that she, a creature I had believed innocent as the wild blossoms, had used her glorious voice for the entertainment of her mother's Sunday evening parties."
Lady Clara grew pale, and her eyes began to flash.
"You are doing great wrong to a noble and good young lady," she said, in a clear, ringing voice, from which all laughter had gone out. "You are unjust, cruel—wickedly cruel—both to yourself and her. I have no patience with you!"
"Do you know Caroline, then? But that is impossible."
"Impossible—what? That I should know the daughter of Olympia? But I do know her. There was a time, I honestly believe, when we were children together, cared for by the same nurse. This I can assure you, Lord Hilton: she was not brought up by the actress; never saw her, in truth, until she was over sixteen years old, when the woman, hearing of her genius and beauty, claimed her as a chattel rather than a child."
"Are you sure of this, Lady Clara?" inquired the young man, greatly disturbed.
"I know it. The poor young lady, brought up with such delicate care, educated as if she were one day to become a peeress of the land, took a terrible dislike to the stage, and, so long as she dared, protested against the life that ambitious actress had marked out for her. That night you saw her she was forced upon the stage after praying upon her knees to be spared. Her acting, from the first, was desperation. She saw you, and it became despair; and you could doubt her—you could leave her. Lord Hilton, I hate you!"