“No?” she said, absently; then suddenly she sat upright, and her face grew set and cold, and her eyes hardened with a disdainful hauteur. “So, Cecil!” she said, and her voice was stern and cuttingly scornful, “so you have made up your mind to marry—what is it?—a dairymaid—no, pardon me!—an actress! An actress, a social pariah, a person one pays one’s money to see upon the stage, to make us laugh for an hour or two, but with whom one would rather not be seen walking in the public streets; and you propose to marry this—this girl? Well, do so, but remember that in marrying her you cut yourself off from me and the world to which you belong, and that you sink into the mud from which she sprang, and are utterly ruined, a social suicide!”
Lord Neville sat and stared at her.
It was not the words, dramatic though they were, which amazed him, but the face, the voice.
“Why, Doris,” he said, at last, “you have seen, you know the marquis?”
She shook her head as her countenance resumed its own girlish freshness and beauty.
“No,” she said, gently. “I have never seen him.”
“No? Well, of all the extraordinary likenesses! It was my esteemed uncle the marquis—making an allowance for the difference in age and the rest—to a point!”
“You forget that I am an actress,” she said, with a little sigh. “It was easy enough, as easy to guess what he—what any one in his position would say to his nephew and heir when he told him what he proposed doing! It is something like what he would say, is it not?”
“It was a wonderful imitation of the marquis’ expression and way of talking—wonderful, darling!—but I don’t think he would have said so much. But there, what difference can it make what he says or thinks, eh, Doris?” he broke off.
“But will it make no difference?” she asked, leaning forward, her hands clasped on her knees, her eyes fixed dreamily on the ground. “I know there must be a sacrifice—let me know how great a one. What difference will it make?” and she looked at him.