"What about advertising 'Lady Macbeth,' and getting ready a burlesque?"
Molly took no notice of this suggestion. "Hilarie thinks the time is now approaching when I ought to make my début. Dick, I declare that I don't care one farthing about disappointed ambition. I told you so before. But I do care about disappointing Hilarie. And that weighs on my soul more than anything almost—more than the two other things."
"What are the two other things?"
"I am coming to them. Either of them, you see, would bring consolation—of sorts—for disappointed ambition. First, your cousin, Sir Humphrey——"
"Oh! He goes on making love, does he?"
"He goes on pressing for an answer. What answer shall I give him?"
"I will try to answer as if I was a disinterested bystander. You must consider not what he wants, but what you want."
"He offers me position and—I suppose—wealth. He wants me to marry him secretly, and to live out of the world, while he smooths matters with his mother."
Dick stopped in the middle of the road. "What?" he cried. "He wants you to marry him secretly? The—the—no, I won't use names and language. Marry him secretly and go into hiding? Why? Because you love the man? But you don't. Because he will make you Lady Woodroffe? But he won't—he will hide you away. Because he is rich? My dear, I know all about him. He has no money at all. The money is his mother's; she could cut him off with a shilling, if she liked. Because he is clever? He isn't. He's the laughing-stock of everybody, except the miserable little clique that he belongs to; they talk of Art—who have no feeling for Art; they hand about things they call Art, which are——"