“I understand,” he said, and dropped it gently. “Your lordship is very kind,” he said; “but Miss Marlowe is going to be married very soon, and, probably, before Lord Cecil. You have not told us the name of the young lady whose engagement to Lord Cecil was so cleverly broken off by Mr. Spenser Churchill. What was it?”
Doris rose, pale as a ghost, and caught Percy Levant’s arm.
“No, no!” she breathed. “No! Do not ask him that!”
The marquis knit his brows.
“Her name?” he said, in a low voice and with a bewildered air. “I—I can’t remember. I am an old man, you see, sir, and—and—her name? What was it?”
Doris, drooping like a lily bent by the storm, clung to Percy Levant’s arm.
“No, you shall not ask him,” she panted.
Slowly, painfully, he removed her fingers from his arm.
“There is no need,” he said, inaudibly to the marquis; “you have told me already. Her name was Doris Marlowe!”