“Madam, though I be the last to express it, I am one of the most ardent of your admirers. Tonight was a delight so high that I venture to predict you have conferred immortality on Mr. Gay’s fine piece, and that it will be performed and delighted in when all we who applauded tonight are dust.”
There was always a background of sadness to my Lord Duke’s thoughts. He could not escape the shadow of his darkened life.
Her own face saddened.
“ ’Tis indeed a very brief triumph,” she said, “I tasted it for a moment, but your Grace is right. The triumph is Mr. Gay’s, for he may well be immortal, but we players are the sparks from a dying fire. Others will sing the songs and hear the laughter, and we in the dust.”
“O Madam, forgive me,” he cried, his dark face softening instantly.— “Why, what a wretch am I to poison your young rejoicing with my melancholy. Life is sweet, and sure few ever had a sweeter cup poured than this of yours—all beauty and genius and a harvest of enchanted hearts. Rejoice in it and forget everything but the happiness you deserve and give.”
She looked at him with an expression that pitied him and herself though for very different reasons. She could not be so long in the Duchess’s house without knowing somewhat of his story, and when they had met, as they did sometimes in her Grace’s presence, he paid her a distant but deep courtesy that was like cold water applied to a burning wound after the blows her self-respect must daily sustain elsewhere.
“He does not treat me as a player,” was her thought, “but as a woman that may deserve courtesy as much as another.”
This was a foundation easy to build on. One so considerate and obliging must be a great gentleman so to condescend to one in the position of an actress—whose only road to the companionship of gentlemen lay through dishonour. This man put forward no pretension to gallantry in her favour, and she must be quick to recognize the distinction between his Grace and the other men who buzzed about her. It is true, and she knew it, that he had the reputation that most men of his rank have with women, but he did not sharpen his weapons on the Duchess’s dependent. He would have despised himself otherwise since her Grace made him welcome to her rooms where she sat with Diana in private and ’tis strange how natural, simple and easy the talk of these three persons, so unlike each other, became as the days past by. Therefore his way of thinking was not unfamiliar to her. She knew that cloud on his brow, and would have given much to charm it away by some innocent kindness such as a sister might bestow, were it not for the vast distance between them of rank and sex. Still, she ventured a little, timidly.
“Your Grace, I was happy tonight, it is true, but I had scarce left the stage when fear and trouble awaited me. And so I think it will be always—brief sunshine and a cloud to swallow it up. I expect no better.
“Fear and trouble!” says the Duke earnestly, “but how and why? Sure there could be none so base as spoil your hard-earned triumph. Tell me what caused it? Now I look closer at you I see tear-marks about your eyes. Indeed this night should have been joy unmixt and perfect.”