"Lots of people considered it was better than the Number I.," returned Lady Darlington with pride, "and the Rotherham Advertiser said a voice of such diapason as mine wasn't often heard in musical comedy."
"Such what as yours?"
"Diapason. Won't you have some muffin?"
"They always serve me out so," said the duchess, "but I will have just a mossel." She regarded her hostess anxiously; "I hope you aren't going to be mad?" she said.
"I am mad," admitted Rosalind—her name was Rosalind—"mad with the longing for auld lang syne. If I weren't crazy I shouldn't own it, because you can't enter into my feelings a bit, but you're the only woman I meet who ought to be able to understand them. Long? Sometimes for a treat I tell the servants I'm not at home to anyone, and I shut myself up and long the tears into my eyes!"
"You cry for the stage? Oh, but, my dear Lady Darlington, you mustn't give way, you must be firm with yourself. Think, just think, what an example you'd be setting if you took to it again! In our position we have the Country to consider. The middle classes say 'What's good enough for the Aristocracy must be good enough for us.' We have to consider our influence on those in a humbler sphere."
"I'm not going to take to it again," said Rosalind. "How can I? Besides, I don't want so much to act—I've no ambition except to be jolly—it's the life I ache for. I'm dull, dull, dull! I want to be among the people I remember. My heart turns back to Dixie. I wouldn't say 'thank you' to be with actors and actresses in London, in the West-End; they're only imitations of the Lords and Ladies that bore me. I want to be on the road with a Number II. crowd—yes, and a Number III. crowd for preference. I want to arrive in a hole-and-corner town on a Sunday night, and have supper in lodgings, and see stout in a jug again, and call the landlady 'Ma.' Oh, how soul-stirring it would be to call a landlady 'Ma!'"
"Lodgings? Look at your drawing-room, with Louis Cans furniture!" said the duchess admonishingly. "You can't be serious?"
"Serious? I'm pathetic! Of course I should find I had been spoilt for it—the pleasure wouldn't last; the stout would taste sour soon, and I should find the landlady impudent, and the lodgings dirty; I daresay I should wish myself back in St. James' Square before I had been away a month. But I don't want to give up St. James' Square—I only want a week-end sometimes as a tonic. That's all I want, just week-ends. If I could be Rosalind Heath again from Saturday to Monday sometimes, I'd be Lady Darlington all the rest of the year cheerfully enough."
This was the moment when her Idea was born. As the idea had consequences, it is noteworthy that this was the moment. If she could be Rosalind Heath again from Saturday to Monday! She had never debated the possibility; but why not—why not even for a week? She couldn't call herself "Rosalind Heath" again, because everybody in Theatre Land knew that Rosalind Heath had married the Earl of Darlington, but who among a lowly band of players would know her face? She had not been a star. All she needed for the freak was a confidante. What had become of Tattie Lascelles?