Those lovely liquid eyes looked at her incredulously.
"What," cried Stella Mayne, with her mocking little laugh—a musical little laugh trained for comedy, and unconsciously artificial—"do you mean to tell me that you care a straw what becomes of me—that it matters to you whether I die in the gutter where I was born, or pitch myself into the Regent's Canal some night when I have a fit of the blue devils?"
"I care very much what becomes of you. I should not be here if I did not wish to do what is best for you."
"Then you come as my friend, and not as my enemy?" said Stella.
"Yes, I am here as your friend," answered Christabel, with an effort.
The actress—a creature all impulse and emotion—fell on her knees at Miss Courtenay's feet, and pressed her lips upon the lady's gloved hand.
"How good you are," she exclaimed—"how good—how good. I have read of such women—they swarm in the novels I get from Mudie—they and fiends. There's no middle distance. But I never believed in them. When the man brought me your card I thought you had come to blackguard me."
Christabel shuddered at the coarse word, so out of harmony with that vellum-bound Shelley, and all the graciousness of Miss Mayne's surroundings.
"Forgive me," said Stella, seeing her disgust. "I am horribly vulgar. I never was like that while—while Angus cared for me."
"Why did he leave off caring for you?" asked Christabel, looking gravely down at the lovely up-turned face—so exquisite in its fragile sensitive beauty.