“Indeed, he did it all for me,” she said. “I sent for him more than a week ago to ask him to plead with Mrs. Abington to break with my brother, whose infatuation for her was ruining his career, and he promised to do this for me. The day that my brother returned I knew what Dick Sheridan had done—all for me—all for me!”
“Is it possible that you suggest that the woman stipulated with him to release your brother only if Dick Sheridan took his place?” he asked.
“I am as certain that she did so as if I had heard her making a compact with him,” said Betsy. “She had an old infatuation for Dick; Mr. Garrick told my father so two days ago. Had I known that, I would not have brought Dick here to beg of him to help us. But he came and this is the result of his coming.”
“I have treated him unjustly—God forgive me!” said Mr. Long. “I went to him and—you can imagine what I said to him. But he did not say a word about—about anything that you have told me.”
“No, he would not do that. He showed me, when I stood before him, how unselfish he could be. And yet once—once—ah, how long ago it seems!—I had a feeling that his whole aim in life was to excel others—to shine as a man of fashion. Like you, I did him an injustice.”
“Ah, my dear, he had not then learned what ’tis to love. You it was, my Betsy, who taught him that the spirit of love—the truest love—the only love—is self-sacrifice.”
“Then would to Heaven he had never learned the lesson!” cried the girl passionately. “I have ruined his life, and my life is over! But what is my life? It matters nothing about my life.”
“Dear one,” he said, “I cannot hear you say that. Nay, my Betsy, I shall live to look on my happiness through his eyes. The position of affairs, though desperate, is not irretrievable. You do not know the world, my child. You do not know the sordid world. Thank Heaven that I have money enough to compensate even the most avaricious of actresses for depriving her of a caprice on which she had set her heart! Betsy, all will yet come right: ’tis merely a question of money.”
But her instinct was truer than all his worldly wisdom.
“Now you are doing her a great injustice,” she said.