"Yes, I know, Duncan!" said she, quickly, soothingly. "I know how you feel! But—"
Duncan slightly repudiated the touch.
"I can't think how you can consider it!" he said passionately, but in a low voice. "A thing like this always gets out! You know—you know how your having been on the stage is regarded by our friends! It is simply insane—"
He had said a little more than he meant, in his high feeling, and Margaret's face had grown white.
"I asked you only for your escort, Duncan," she said gently, but with blazing eyes. There was open hostility in the look they exchanged.
"I can't see what good my escort does," said the boy, childishly, "when you won't listen to what you know is true!"
"Nevertheless, I still want it," she answered evenly. And after a moment Duncan, true to his training, and already a little ashamed of his ineffectual outburst,—for to waste a display of emotion was, in his code, a lamentable breach of etiquette,—shrugged his shoulders.
"Still want to stay with it?" said Mr. Wyatt, giving her a shrewd, friendly look.
"Certainly," she said promptly; but she was breathing fast.
"Then we might go and talk things over," he said; and a moment later they were crossing the theatre to the stage door. The final curtain had fallen only a moment before, but the lights were up, the orchestra halfway through a swift waltz, and the audience, buttoning coats and struggling with gloves, was pouring up the aisles. Duncan, through all his anger and apprehension, felt a little thrill of superiority over these departing playgoers as he and his stepmother were admitted behind the scenes. He was young, and the imagined romance of green-rooms and footlights appealed to him.