She plied him with questions as they strolled toward the white-pillared portico. The house was old and shabby, but he did not notice it. The place was run down and impoverished, but it seemed very beautiful to him, for he noticed that she wore one of his roses in her lustrous hair.
Entering the hallway he met some of the younger brothers and sisters, and felt a sudden strange affection spring up in his heart for them. Elvira took him through into a gloomy parlor, lined with plain hair-cloth furniture. On the walls were several portraits. “This was my mother,” said the girl, affectionately, pointing to what Archibald felt to be a hideous daub, a red-faced woman in black, against a green background. It was the portrait by Mr. Raymond, whose abode was now the poor-house. “She died only two years ago——”
“I fancy if she had lived,” said Archibald, “you would not have tried—the stage?”
She looked at him calmly a moment.
“That Boston man has told you?”
“Yes, I learned the fact from his friends.”
“I shall never—again.” There was a despairing pathos in her voice.
“Elvira,” he said, slowly, “as I see it—I think it was very noble of you to try.”
Then, unaccountably to him, she burst into tears.
“It is what I love—what I long for—to be an actress—a great actress,” she sobbed. “But I can’t—I can’t! I can’t exist with those creatures—those horrible men who hang about you! No one knows what I endured! No one knows what, too, I gave up when I left the stage and came home; but I had to.”