There is no disguise which can long conceal love when it does, or feign it when it does not exist.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
"How strange it is to be rich!" cried Alice Sinclair, as she sat with Doris in a shelter by the sea at Hastings. "It is delightful!"
Doris smiled, but her smile only seemed to enhance the sadness in the expression of her beautiful face, and she shivered slightly as she drew a fur-lined cloak more closely round her. "This is different from account-collecting," she said, looking at the fashionably dressed people sauntering by, and then allowing her eyes to rest upon the beauty of the sunlit waves before them.
"Yes, or making imitation oil-paintings either!" exclaimed Alice. "Who would have thought to see us, now, that we were two poor girls toiling in a London garret not long ago?"
"To feed a 'Lion' and pay a monstrous debt," said Doris, plaintively.
"And now our task is done," continued Alice, with cheerfulness. "The Lion is fed, and is roaring loudly in the Royal Academy: moreover, he has food enough for a lifetime. And as for you, your struggle with the hard cold world is ended, dear," and as she spoke she laid her hand on Doris's thin arm. "Are you not glad?" she asked a little wistfully, for the sadness of her friend was a great trouble to her.
"I try to be," answered Doris.
"Try to be?" Alice raised her eyebrows.
"Yes. I have to try, you know, for I don't feel able to rejoice about anything in these days." The tears came to Doris's eyes as she spoke, and her lips trembled.
"Poor dear! That is because you are out of health----"