“I respect him; I think him worthy——”
Lady Despard broke in impatiently:
“My dear, dear child, how can you tell? What experience have you had?”
Doris looked up with a swift spasm of pain.
“I have had some experience,” she said, in a low, troubled voice. “You ask me if I love him. He knows that I do not, and he is content. Lady Despard, I have had two great sorrows in my life—the loss of him who stood as a father to me was one; the other was the discovery that the man to whom I had given my heart——” She stopped. “Is it so easy to love, and lose, and forget, and love again so quickly?”
Lady Despard laid her hand upon her head with tender sympathy.
“My poor Doris!” she said, gently and pityingly. “And that is why you are so cold to them all? I might have known there was something. I am so sorry, dear! But—but why consent to marry Percy Levant?”
Doris smiled wearily.
“I—don’t be angry with me—I don’t think I can answer in set terms. Perhaps it is because I think I can make him happy; perhaps it is because he is as lonely as I am, or should be but for you, dear Lady Despard. Why should I not marry him and make his life happier and brighter? Perhaps”—her lips quivered—“I shall learn to forget the past now that I have buried it forever!”
Lady Despard looked at her with troubled apprehension.