The maid smiled and left. Marie Louise was afraid to believe her own hopes.
“You don’t mean you want me to stay, do you––not after what that woman said?”
“Do you imagine for a moment,” returned Polly, “that I’d ever believe a word that cat could utter? Good Lord! if Lady Clifton-Wyatt told me it was raining and I could see it was, I’d know it wasn’t and put down my umbrella.”
Marie Louise rejoiced at the trust implied, but she could not make a fool of so loyal a friend. She spoke with difficulty:
“What if what she said was the truth, or, anyway, a kind of burlesque of it?”
“Marie Louise!” Polly gasped, and plounced into a chair. “Tell me the truth this minute, the true truth.”
Marie Louise was perishing for a confidante. She had gone about as far without one as a normal woman can. She sat wondering how to begin, twirling her rings on her fingers. “Well, you see––you see––it is true that I’m not Sir Joseph’s daughter. I was born in a little village––in America––Wakefield––out there in the Middle West. I ran away from home, and––”
She hesitated, blanched, blushed, skipped over the years she tried not to think of and managed never to speak of. She came down to:
“Well, anyway, at last I was in Berlin––on the stage––”
“You were an actress?” Polly gasped.