“I saw her too.
Yes, but you must not love her.
I will not, as you do; to worship her,
As she is heavenly and a blessed goddess;
I love her as a woman.”
A decent-looking woman opened the door of the house in Hercules Buildings, and ushered Mr. Dalbrook up two flights of stairs to the small back-room in which Mercy Porter had lived her lonely life from year’s end to year’s end. The tasteful arrangement of that humble chamber struck Theodore at the first glance. He had seen such rooms at Cambridge, where an undergraduate of small means had striven to work wonders with a few shabby old sticks that had done duty for half-a-dozen other undergraduates, and which had been but of poorest quality when they issued, new and sticky with cheap varnish, from the emporium of a local upholsterer.
Mercy was very pale, and although she received her visitor with outward calmness, he could see that she had not yet recovered from yesterday’s agitation.
“What induced you to take so much trouble to betray me, Mr. Dalbrook?” she asked.
“Betray is a very hard word, Miss Porter.”
“You don’t suppose that I believed yesterday’s meeting was accidental? You took the trouble to bring Lady Cheriton across my path in order to satisfy your curiosity about my identity. Was that generous?”