"Why not?" asked Clorinda, her heart fluttering violently.
"Because he'd have to be in morning dress," said the actor-manager, laughing heartily.
To Clorinda his innocent merriment seemed the laughter of a mocking fiend. She turned away sick at heart. There was nothing for it but to propose outright at teatime. Clorinda did so, and was accepted without further difficulty.
"And now, dearest," she said, after she had been allowed to press the first kiss of troth upon his coy lips, "I should like to know who I am going to be?"
"Clorinda Bell, of course," he said. "That is the advantage actresses have. They need not take their husband's name in vain."
"Yes, but what am I to call you, dearest?"
"Dearest?" he echoed enigmatically. "Let me be dearest—for a little while."
She forbore to press him further. For the moment it was enough to have won him. The sweetness of that soothed her wounded vanity at his indifference to the prize coveted by men and convents. Enough that she was to be mated to a great man, whose speech and silence alike bore the stamp of individuality.
"Dearest be it," she answered, looking fondly into his Moorish eyes. "Dearest! Dearest!"
"Thank you, Clorinda. And now may I see your mother? I have never learnt what she has to say to me."