Archibald’s face was a study.
“Did you know you were letting your mother’s house to actresses?” asked Hollis, with a sneer.
“Miss Price is probably a different person from the one to whom Mr. Nahant has reference,” said Archibald, coldly.
“I remember the girl,” said Jack Chadwick. “She was very young and beautiful, and fitted her part admirably. She made an excellent ingénue. She held herself well—not at all gushing, don’t you know—but poetic, spirituelle. She played in ‘A Scrap of Paper’—some picked-up company with her. She carried the play very well. I have often wondered what became of her.”
“So this is the creature who has rented your house, and whom you dined with to-night,” sneered Hollis; “an ingénue, indeed!”
“Miss Price is a lady—not a ‘creature,’” said Archibald, haughtily. “As far as I have seen, she can only honor our house by remaining under its roof.” And Archibald bowed stiffly, and took his leave in the midst of an embarrassed silence.
VII.
He preferred not to see Elvira again before she took her departure for Vermont the next day. Her aunt remained in the city to look after her “mission work.” Archibald presented her, as the gift of a rich, unknown friend, fifty dollars—their board-money—to send some of her boys into the country. After Elvira’s departure he became very despondent. Elvira’s image was broken to him, and while she had not become in his mind quite an adventuress, yet she had concealed her former life from him. She had deceived him.
But as the days went by and he missed her, he found that he must speak to Miss Perkins about Elvira’s acting, or go through a serious case of nervous prostration. He said very bluntly to her, one day, at dinner:
“So I hear your niece is a great actress.”