Chapter III · (continued 2)

"Well, just about that fatal time," Lonsdale continued, "Tony and I went for a jolly little bump round at Covent Garden and bumped into Sylvia and Lily en pierrette, as they say at my crammer's, where they're teaching me enough French to administer the destinies of Europe for ten years to come. Where were we? Oh yes, en pierrette. 'Hello, hello' I said. 'Two jolly little girls en pierrette, and what about it? Well, we had two or three more bumps round, and Tony was getting more and more depressed about himself, and so I said, 'Why don't we go down to Brighton and cheer ourselves up?' 'That's all right,' said Sylvia, 'if you'll help me put a jolly old chimpanzee in a fellow's flat.' I said, I'll put a jolly old elephant, if you like.' You see, the notion was that when Hausberg opened the door of the flat he should say, 'Are you there, Lily?' It was all to be very amusing and jolly."

"And what has this to do with Clarehaven?" asked Dorothy.

"Wait a bit. Wait a bit. I'm changing gears at this moment, and if you interrupt I shall jam. You see, my notion was that Tony should buzz down to Brighton with us and ... well ... there's a nasty corner here.... I told you, didn't I, that the only way with hard-hearted little girls is to make them jealous? And the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating, what? Anyway, no sooner did Queenie hear I'd eloped with an amorous blonde than we made it up. Look here, the road's clear now, so let's be serious. Tony's madly in love with you. It's no use telling me you're a good little girl, because look round you. Where's the evidence? I mean to say, your salary's six pounds a week. So, I repeat, where's the evidence? You may dream that you dwell in marble halls on six pounds a week, but you can't really do it."

"If Lord Clarehaven has sent you here to insult me," said Dorothy, "he might at least have had the courage to come and do it himself."

"You're taking this very unkindly. On my word of honor I assure you, Doodles, that Tony's trip to Brighton ended in talk. I know this, because I heard them. In fact, I summoned the night porter and asked him to stop the beehive next door."

"This conversation is not merely insulting," said Dorothy, "it's very coarse."

"I see you're prejudiced, Doodles. Now Queenie was also prejudiced; in fact, at one point she was so prejudiced that she jabbed me with a comb. But I calmed her down and she gradually began to appreciate the fact that not only is there a silver lining to every cloud, but that there is also a cloud to most silver linings. Bored with mere luxury, she realized that a good man's love—soft music, please—should not be lightly thrown away; and now, to be absolutely serious for one moment, what about commissioning me to buzz down to Devonshire and tell Tony that there's no need for him to go chasing the okapi through equatorial Africa?"

"All this levity may be very amusing to you, Mr. Lonsdale, but to me it is only painful."

"Well, of course, if you're going to take my friendly little run round the situation like that, there's nothing more to be said."

"Nothing whatever," Dorothy agreed.

Lonsdale retired with a shrug, and a day or two later Lord Clarehaven's departure for Mombasa was duly recorded in the Morning Post. Dorothy's self-importance had been so deeply wounded by the manner in which Lonsdale had commented upon her position in the world that for some time she could scarcely bear to meet people, and she even came near to relinquishing the publicity of the stage, because she began to feel that the nightly audience was sneering at her discomfiture. The gift of a set of Russian sables from Hausberg and the news that her investments were prospering failed to rouse her from the indifference with which she was regarding life. All that had seemed so rich in the flat now merely oppressed her with a sense of useless display. The continual assurances she received that only the melodious trio had saved "The Duke and the Dairymaid" from being something like a failure gave her no elation. Her silks and sables were no more to her than rags; her crystal flasks of perfumes, and those odorous bath-salts, in which the lemon and the violet blended so exquisitely the sharp with the sweet, had lost their savor; even her new manicure set of ivory-and-gold did not pass the unprofitable hours so pleasantly as that old ebony set of which she had been so proud in West Kensington, it seemed a century ago. Lonsdale by his attitude had made her feel that the luxury of her surroundings was not the natural expression of a personality predestined to find in rank its fit expression, but merely the stock-in-trade of a costly doll.

It was Tufton who provided Dorothy with a new elixir of life that was worth all the scent in Bond Street, and a restorative that made the most pungent toilet vinegar insipid as water.

"I don't think you ought to take it so badly," he said. "Shooting the rhino for the sake of a woman is better than throwing the other kind of rhino at her head. It shows that he's pretty badly hit."

"The rhino?" asked Dorothy, with a pale smile.

"No, no," protested Tufton, shocked at carrying a joke too far. "Clarehaven. Wait till he comes back. If he comes back as much in love as he went away you'll hear nothing more about flats round the corner. Curzon Street is also round the corner, don't forget, and my belief is that you'll move straight in from here."

"You're a good pal, Harry."

"Well, I don't think my worst enemy has ever accused me of not sticking to my friends."

This was true; but then Mr. Tufton did not make friends lightly. Old walls afford a better foothold to the climber than new ones.

When Dorothy pondered these words of encouragement she cheered up; and that night John Richards, who had watched her performance from the stage-box, told his sleeping partner that he intended to bring her along in the next Vanity production.

"She gets there," he boomed. "Goo' gir'! Goo' gir'!"

V

Dorothy indulged her own renewed joie de vivre by investigating the glimpse of her father's private joie de vivre vouchsafed to her that night in St. John's Wood, and without much difficulty she found out that for the last two years he had been maintaining there a second establishment, which at the very lowest calculation must be costing him £400 a year. It was not remarkable that he had wanted to obtain a higher rate of interest on his wife's capital. His daughter debated with herself how to play this unusual hand, and she decided not to lead these black trumps too soon, but to reserve them for the time when they might threaten her ace of hearts and that long suit of diamonds. At present she was not suffering the least inconvenience from her family, and since she went to live in Halfmoon Street it had not been her habit to visit Lonsdale Road more often than once a month. These visits, rare as winter sunshine in England, were not much warmer: the family basked for a while in the radiance of Dorothy's rich clothes, but they soon found that clothes only give heat to the person who wears them, and since Dorothy did not encourage them to follow the sun like visitors to the azure coast, they made the best of their own fireside and avoided any risk of taking cold by depending too much on her deceptive radiance.

Meanwhile, Hausberg had turned Dorothy's £250 into £500 by nothing more compromising than good advice; and by March, to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, the £500 had become £2,000. Not even then did Hausberg ask anything from her in return; occasionally a dim suspicion crossed her mind that a profound cause must lie underneath this display of good will, and she asked herself if he was patiently, very patiently, angling for her; but when time went by without his striking, the suspicions died away and did not recur. Moreover, her financial adviser was engaged in dazzling Queenie Molyneux with diamonds, to the manifest chagrin of Lonsdale, who had let the liaison between himself and Queenie come to mean much more to him than he had ever intended that evening at the Savoy. In the end his mistress was so much dazzled by the diamonds that she put on rose-colored spectacles to save her eyes and, looking through them at Hausberg, decided to accept his devotion. Lonsdale took the theft of his love hardly; whatever chance he might have had of entering the Foreign Office disappeared under an emotional strain that in so round and pink a young man was nearly grotesque. This seemed to Dorothy a suitable moment to repay evil with good, and when, shortly afterward, she saw the disconsolate lover gloomily contemplating a half-bottle of Pol Roger '98 on a solitary table at the Savoy she went over to him and offered to be reconciled.

He squeezed Dorothy's hand gratefully, sighed, and shook his head.

"I can't keep away from the old place. Every night we used to come here and—" The recollection was too much for him; he could do nothing but point mutely to the half-bottle.

"That makes you think," he said, at last. "After the dozens of bottles we've had together, to come down to that beastly little dwarf alone."

"And you've failed in your examination, too?" inquired Dorothy, tenderly rubbing it in.

"Just as well, Doodles, just as well. I should be afraid to attach myself even to an embassy at present."

The band struck up the music of the Pink Quartet.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "This is too much. Here, Carlo, Ponto, Rover—What's your name?"

The waiter leaned over obsequiously.

"Here, take this fiver with my compliments to Herr Rumpelstiltzkin and ask him to cut out that tune and give us the 'Dead March' instead."

"Why not the 'Wedding March'?" asked Dorothy, maliciously.

"I give you my solemn word of honor," said Lonsdale, "that if only Queenie—well, I think I can get up this hill on the top speed—if I were the first, I would marry Queenie. You know, I'm beginning to think Tony made rather an ass of himself, buzzing off like that to Basutoland or wherever it is. By the way, has it ever struck you what an anomaly—that's a good word—I got that word out of a précis at my crammer's. It's a splendid word and can be used in summer and winter with impunity, what? Has it ever struck you what an anomaly it is that you can get a license to shoot big game and drive a car, but that you can't get a license to shoot Hausbergs? Well, well, if Queenie had your past and your own future and could cut out some of the presents, by Jove! I would marry her. I really would."

Dorothy said to herself that she had always liked Arthur Lonsdale in spite of everything, and when he asked her now if her friends were not waiting for her she told him that they could wait and gratified the forsaken one by sitting down at his table.

"Of course, when Queenie and I parted," he went on, "she made it absolutely clear to me that this fellow Hausberg meant nothing to her; in fact, between ourselves, she rather gave me to understand that things might go on as they were. But you know, hang it! I can't very well do that sort of thing. The funny thing is that the more I refuse, the more keen she gets. I mean to say it is ridiculous, really, because of course she can't be very much in love with me. To begin with, well, she's about twice my height, what? No, I think I shall have to go in for motor-cars. They used to be nearly as difficult to manage as women not so long ago, but they seem to be answering to civilization much more rapidly. It's a pity somebody can't blow along with some invention to improve women. Skidding all over the place, don't you know, as they do now ... but I cannot understand why Hausberg should have fixed on Queenie. I always thought he was after you, and I'm not sure he isn't. Did you turn him down?"

"He has only been helping me with some investments."

"I never heard of a Jew helping people with their investments just for the pleasure of helping."

"I had money of my own to invest," Dorothy explained. "Family money."

"Lonsdale money, in fact, eh?" laughed the heir of the house.

"Well, if you really want to know, it is Lonsdale money. Money left in trust for me by my grandmother, who was a Lonsdale. I know you laugh at this, but it's perfectly true."

"Oh no, I don't laugh at you," said Lonsdale. "I never thought you were a joke. In fact, I asked the governor if he could trace anything about your branch in the family history. But the trouble with him is that he's not very interested in anything except politics. Frightfully narrow-minded old boy. He's been abroad most of his life, poor devil. He's out of touch with things."

Dorothy thought that if her Lonsdale ancestry could appear sufficiently genuine to induce the heir of the family to consult his father about it there was not much doubt of its impressing the rest of the world. It happened that among the party with which she was supposed to be supping that night was a young Frenchman with some invention that was going to revolutionize the manufacture of motor-cars. She decided to introduce him to Lonsdale, and a month or two later she had the gratification of hearing that Lord Cleveden had been persuaded to allow his son the capital necessary to begin a motor business in which the Frenchman, with his invention, was to be one of the partners, and a well-known professional racing-motorist another. The firm expressed their gratitude to Dorothy not only by presenting her with a car, but also by paying her a percentage on orders that came through her discreet advertisement of their wares. If Clarehaven came back now and asked Lonsdale what she had been doing since he left England, surely he would no longer try to damn the course of their true love.

Just after Dorothy and Olive had left town for their holiday in July the great man died suddenly, and, naturally, Olive was very much upset by the shock.

"Never mind," said Dorothy. "Luckily I've made some money, so we needn't leave the flat."

"I wasn't thinking of that point of view," Olive sobbed. "I was thinking how good he'd always been to me and how much I shall miss him."

"Well, now you can tell me who he was," Dorothy suggested, consolingly.

"No, darling, oh no; this is the very time of all others when I wouldn't have anybody know who he was."

Dorothy, however, searched the papers, and she soon came to the conclusion that the great man was none other than the Duke of Ayr. Such a discovery thrilled her with the majesty of her retrospect, and she fancied that even Clarehaven would be a little impressed if he knew who Olive's friend was:

John Charles Chisholm-Urquhart, K.T., 9th and last Duke of Ayr; also Marquess and Earl of Ayr, Marquess and Earl of Dumbarton, Earl of Kilmaurs and Kilwinning, Viscount Dalry and Dalgarven, Viscount of Brackenbrae, Lord Urquhart, Inverew, and Troon, Baron Chisholm, Earl Chisholm, Baron Hurst, Baron Urquhart of Coylton, Lord Urquhart of Dumbarton, and Baron Dalgarven.

The last Duke of Ayr! Nobody in the world to inherit one of all those splendid titles! Not even a duchess to survive him!

The press commented just as ruefully as Dorothy upon the extinction of another noble house. Dukes and dodos, great families and great auks, one felt that they would soon all be extinct together.

"It's a great responsibility to marry a peer," Dorothy thought.

She gently and tactfully let Olive know that she had found out the identity of the great man, and they went together to stand for a minute or two outside Ayr House, where the hatchment, crape-hung, was all that was left of so much grandeur and of such high dignities and honors. Nor did Dorothy allude to the duke's omission to provide for Olive in his will, though, being a bachelor without an heir, he might easily have done so. No doubt death had found him unprepared; but the funeral must have been wonderful, with the pipers sounding "The Lament" for Chisholm when the coffin was lowered into the grave.

"I'm very glad they're closing 'The Duke and the Dairymaid' this week," said Dorothy. "I should hate to see that title now on every 'bus and every hoarding."

The Vanity's last production had not been such a success as either of its two predecessors, and many people about town began to say that if John Richards was not careful the Frivolity was going to cut out the Vanity. Therefore in the autumn of 1905 a tremendous effort was made to eclipse all previous productions with "The Beauty Shop." Early in August John Richards sent for Dorothy, gave her a song to study, and told her to come again in a week's time to let him hear what she made of it. To print baldly the words of this great song without the melody, without the six beauties supporting it from the background, without the entranced scene-shifters and the bewitched audience, without even a barrel-organ to recall it, is something like sacrilege, but here is one verse:

"Goo' gir' said Mr. Richards when Dorothy had finished and the dust in his little office in the cupola of the Vanity had subsided. "Goo' gir'. I thi' you'll ma' a 'ice 'ihel hit in that song."

The impresario was right: Dorothy did make a resounding hit; and a more welcome token of it than her picture among the letterpress and advertisements of every illustrated paper, the dedication of a new face-cream, and the christening of a brand of cigarettes in her honor, was the reappearance of Clarehaven with character and complexion much matured by the sun of Africa, so ripe, indeed, that he was ready to fall at her feet. She received him gently and kindly, but without encouragement; he was given to understand that his treatment had driven her to take refuge in art, the result of which he had just been witnessing from the front of the house. Besides, she told him, now that Olive's friend was dead, she must stay and look after her. People had misjudged Olive and herself so much in the past that she did not intend to let them misjudge her in future. She was making money at the Vanity now, and she begged Lord Clarehaven, if he had ever felt any affection for her, to go away again and shoot more wild animals. Cupid himself would have had to use dum-dum darts to make any impression on Dorothy in her present mood.

Such nobility of bearing, such wounded beauty, such weary grace, could only have one effect on a man who had spent so many months among hippos and black women, and without hesitation Clarehaven proposed marriage. Dorothy's heart leaped within her; but she preserved a calm exterior, and a sad smile expressed her disbelief in his seriousness. He protested; almost he declaimed. She merely shook her head, and the desperate suitor hurried down to Devonshire in order to convince his mother that he must marry Dorothy at once, and that she must demonstrate, either by visit or by letter, what a welcome his bride would receive from the family. Clarehaven lacked eloquence, and the dowager was appalled. Lonsdale was telegraphed for, and presently he came up to town to act as her emissary to beg Dorothy to refuse her son.

"It'll kill the poor lady," he prophesied. "I know you're not wildly keen on Tony, so let him go, there's a dear girl."

"I never had the slightest intention of doing anything else. You don't suppose that just when I've made my first success I'm going to throw myself away on marriage. You ought to know me better, Lonnie."

Lonsdale was frankly astonished at Dorothy's attitude; but he was glad to be excused from having to argue with her about the unsuitableness of the match, because he did sincerely admire her, and, moreover, had some reason to be grateful for her practical sympathy at the time of his break with Queenie Molyneux. He went away from Halfmoon Street with reassurances for the countess.

It was at this momentous stage in Dorothy's career that Mr. Caffyn, awed by the evidence of his daughter's fame he beheld on every side, chose to call for her one evening at the stage-door with a box of chocolates, in which was inclosed a short note of congratulation and an affectionately worded request that she would pay the visit to her family that was now long overdue. Dorothy pondered for a minute her line of action before sending down word that she would soon be dressed and that the gentleman was to wait in her car. When she came out of the theater and told the chauffeur to drive her to West Kensington, Mr. Caffyn expressed his pleasure at her quick response to his appeal. They drove along, talking of matters trivial enough, until in the silence of the suburban night the car stopped before 17 Lonsdale Road.

"Good-by," said Dorothy.

"You'll come in for a bit?" asked her father, in surprise.

"Oh no; you'll be wanting to get to bed," she said.

"Well, it's very kind of you to drive me back," Mr. Caffyn told her, humbly. "Very kind indeed. You'll be interested to know that this is a much nicer motor than the Bishop of Chelsea's. He was kind enough to drive me back from the congress of Melanesian Missions the other day, and so I'm acquainted with his motor."

"He didn't drive you to Lauriston Mansions, did he?" Dorothy asked.

The sensitive springs of the car quivered for a moment in response to Mr. Caffyn's jump.

"What do you mean?" he stammered.

"Oh, I know all about it," his daughter began, with cold severity. "It's all very sordid, and I don't intend to go into details; but I want you quite clearly to understand once and for all that communication between you and me must henceforth cease until I wish to reopen it. It's extremely possible, in fact it's probable, in fact I may say it's certain that I'm shortly going to marry the Earl of Clarehaven, and inasmuch as one of the charms of my present position is the fact that I have no family, I want you all quite clearly to understand that after my marriage any recognition will have to come from me first."

Mr. Caffyn was too much crushed at being found out in his folly and hypocrisy to plead his own case, but he ventured to put in a word for his wife's feelings and begged Dorothy not to be too hard on her.

"You're the last person who has any right to talk about my mother. Come along, jump out, father. I must be getting back. I've a busy day to-morrow, with two performances."

The sound of Mr. Caffyn's pecking with his latch-key at the lock was drowned in the noise of the car's backing out of Lonsdale Road. Dorothy laughed lightly to herself when she compared this interview with the one she had had not so many months ago about the £500, which, by the way, she must send back to her mother if Hausberg advised her to sell out those shares. No doubt, such a sum would be most useful to her father with his numerous responsibilities.

"And now," she murmured to herself, "I see no reason why I shouldn't meet Tony's mother."

VI

Dorothy had not been entirely insincere with Lonsdale in comparing marriage with success to the detriment of marriage. Success is a wonderful experience for the young, in spite of the way those who obtain it too late condemn it as a delusion; few girls of twenty-one, luxuriously independent and universally flattered, within two years of going on the stage would have seen marriage even with an earl in quite such wonderful colors as formerly. Fame may have its degrees; but when Dorothy, traveling in her car, heard errand-boys upon the pavement whistling "Dolly and her Collie" she had at least as much right to feel proud of herself as some wretched novelist traveling by tube who sees a young woman reading a sixpenny edition of one of his works, or a mother whose dribbling baby is prodded by a lean spinster in a tram, or a hen who lays a perfectly ordinary egg and makes as much fuss over it as if it were oblong.

It was certain that if Dorothy chose she could have one of the two principal parts in the next Vanity production and be earning in another couple of years at least £60 a week. There was no reason why she should remain in musical comedy; there was no reason why she should not take to serious comedy with atmosphere and surreptitious curtains at the close of indefinite acts; there was no reason why some great dramatist should not fall in love with her and invert the usual method of sexual procedure by laying upon her desk the offspring of their spiritual union. The possibilities of the future in every direction were boundless.

At the same time even as a countess her starry beams would not necessarily be obscured. As Countess of Clarehaven she might have as many pictures of herself in the illustrated papers as now; she could not give her name to face-creams, but she might give it to girls' clubs: one countess had even founded a religious sect, and another countess had ... but when one examined the history of countesses there was as much variety as in the history of actresses. And yet as a Vanity countess would it not be most distinguished of all not to appear in the illustrated papers, not to found sects and dress extravagantly at Goodwood? Would it not be more distinguished to live quietly down in Devonshire and make no more startling public appearances than by sometimes opening a bazaar or judging a collection of vegetables? Would it not be more distinguished to be the mother of young Lord Clare and Lady Dorothy Clare, and Lady Cynthia Clare, and the Honorable Arthur Clare.... Dorothy paused; she was thinking how improper it was that the younger sons of an earl should be accorded no greater courtesy than those of a viscount or a baron, when his daughters were entitled to as much as the daughters of a duke or a marquess. And after all, why shouldn't Tony be created a marquess? That was another career for a countess she had omitted to consider—the political hostess, the inspiration and amanuensis of her husband's speeches to the House of Lords. Some infant now squalling in his perambulator would write his reminiscences of a great lady's salon in the early years of the twentieth century, when the famous Dorothy Lonsdale stepped out of the public eye, but kept her hold upon the public pulse as the wise and beautiful Marchioness of Clarehaven. The second Marquess of Clarehaven, she dreamed; and beneath this heading in a future Debrett she read below, "Wife Living of the First Marquess. Dorothy (Marchioness of Clarehaven)"; if Arthur Lonsdale married well, that marchioness might not object to one of her younger daughters marrying his eldest son. Dorothy started. How should she herself be recorded in Debrett? "Dorothy, daughter of Gilbert Caffyn"? Even that would involve a mild falsification of her birth certificate, and if her sister Dorothy married that budding young solicitor from Norbiton they might take action against her. She hurriedly looked up in Debrett and Who's Who all the other actresses who had married into the peerage. In Debrett their original names in their stark and brutal ugliness were immortally inscribed; but in Who's Who their stage names were usually added between brackets. "The Earl of Clarehaven, m. 1905 Norah d. of G. Caffyn (known on the stage as Dorothy Lonsdale)." Ugh! At least she would not advertise the obvious horror of her own name so blatantly. She would not be more conspicuous than "Norah (Dorothy) d. of G. Caffyn." But how the girls at the theater would laugh! The girls at the theater? Why should the girls at the theater be allowed any opportunity of laughter—at any rate in her hearing? No, if she decided to accept Tony she should obliterate the theater. There should be no parade about her marriage; she would be married simply, quietly, and ruthlessly.

At the Vanity, Dorothy and her collie were a ravishing success; but she was a better actress off the stage than she was on, and she had soon persuaded herself that she really was still uncertain whether to accept Clarehaven's hand or not. The minor perplexities of stage name and real name, of town and country life, of publicity and privacy as a countess, magnified themselves into serious doubts about the prudence of marrying at all, and by the month of December Clarehaven was nearly distracted by her continuous refusals of him. The greater favorite she became with the public the more he desired her; and she would have found it hard to invent any condition, however flagrantly harsh, that would have deterred him from the match. Tufton almost went down on his knees to implore her to marry the lovesick young earl, his greatest friend; and even Lonsdale talked to Dorothy about her cruelty, and from having been equipped a month ago with invincible arguments against the match, now told her that in spite of everything, he thought she really ought to make the poor lad happy.

"He's as pale as a fellow I bumped in the back last Thursday, cutting round Woburn Square on the wrong side," he declared.

"No, he's not so sunburnt as he was," Dorothy agreed.

"Sunburnt? He's moonburnt—half-moonburnt—starburnt! But sunburnt! My dear Doodles, you're indulging in irony. That's what you're doing."

"I don't see why I should marry him when his mother hasn't even written me a letter. I don't want his family to feel that he's disgracing them by marrying me. If Lady Clarehaven will tell me with her own lips that she'll be proud for her son to marry me, why, then I'll think about it."

"No, really, dash it, my dear girl," Lonsdale expostulated. "You're being unreasonable. You're worse than a Surrey magistrate. Let the old lady alone until you're married and she has to make the best of a bad bargain."

"Thanks very much," Dorothy said. "That's precisely the attitude I wish to guard myself against."

Lonsdale's failure to soften Dorothy's heart made Clarehaven hopeless; he reached Devonshire to spend Christmas with his family in a mood so desperate that his mother began to be nervous. The head-keeper at Clare Court spoke with alarm of the way his lordship held his gun while getting over stiles.

"Maybe, my lady, that after lions our pheasants seem a bit tame to his lordship, though I disremember as I ever saw them wilder than what they be this year—but if you'll forgive the liberty, my lady, a gun do be as dangerous in Devonshire as in Africa, and 'tis my belief that his lordship has summat on his mind, as they say."

A shooting accident upon a neighboring estate the very day after this warning from the keeper determined Lady Clarehaven to put her pride in her pocket and write to Dorothy.

CLARE COURT, DEVON, January 2, 1906.

DEAR MISS LONSDALE,—I fear you must have thought me most remiss in not writing to you before, but you will, perhaps, understand that down here in the country the notion of marrying an actress presents itself as a somewhat alarming contingency, and I was anxious to assure myself that my son's future happiness was so completely bound up in such a match that any further opposition on my part would be useless and unkind. Our friend Arthur Lonsdale spoke so highly of you and of the dignity of your attitude that I was much touched, and I must ask you to forgive my lack of generosity in not writing before to tell you how deeply I appreciated your refusal to marry my son. I understand now that his departure from England a year ago was due to this very cause, and I can only bow before the strength of such an affection and withdraw my opposition to the marriage. I am assuming, perhaps unjustifiably, that you love Tony as much as he loves you. Of course, if this is not so, it would be an impertinence on my part to interfere in your private affairs, and if you write and tell me that you cannot love Tony I must do my best as a mother to console him. But if you do love him, as I can't help feeling that you must, and if you will write to me and say that no barrier exists between you and him except the old-fashioned prejudice against what would no doubt be merely superficially an ill-assorted union, I shall welcome you as my daughter-in-law and pray for your happiness. I must, indeed, admit to being grievously worried about Tony. He has not even bothered to keep up the shooting-book, and such extraordinary indifference fills me with alarm.

Yours sincerely, AUGUSTA CLAREHAVEN.

Dorothy debated many things before she answered this letter; but she debated longest of all the question of whether she should write back on crested note-paper or simple note-paper. Finally she chose the latter.

7 HALFMOON MANSIONS, HALFMOON STREET, W

January 6, 1906.

DEAR LADY CLAREHAVEN,—Your letter came as a great joy to me. I don't think I have ever pretended that I did not love Tony with all my heart, and it was just because I did love him so much that I would not marry him without his mother's consent.

My own Puritan family disowned me when I went on the stage, and I said to myself then that I would never again do anything to bring unhappiness into a family. I should prefer that if I marry Tony the wedding should be strictly quiet. I cannot bear the way the papers advertise such sacred things nowadays. Having had no communication with my own family for more than two years, I do not want to reopen the painful memories of our quarrel. My only ambition is to lead a quiet, uneventful life in the depths of the country, and I hope you will do all you can to persuade Tony to remain in Devonshire. You will not think me rude if I do make one condition beforehand. I will marry him if you will promise to remain at Clare Court and help me through the difficult first years of my new position. Please write and let me have your promise to do this. You don't know how much it would help me to think that you and his sisters will be at my side. Perhaps you will think that I am assuming too much in asking this. I need not say that if you find me personally unsympathetic I shall not bear any resentment, and in that case Tony and I can always live in Curzon Street. But I do so deeply pray that you will like me and that his sisters will like me. Your letter has given me much joy, and I only wait for your answer to leave the stage (which I hate) forever.

Yours sincerely, DOROTHY LONSDALE.

The dowager was won. By return of post she wrote:

MY DEAR DOROTHY,—Thank you extremely for your very nice letter. Please do exactly as you think best about the details of your wedding. You will receive a warm welcome from us all.

Yours affectionately, AUGUSTA CLAREHAVEN.

During these negotiations Olive had been away at Brighton getting over influenza, and Dorothy decided to join her down there and be married out of town to avoid public curiosity. She had telegraphed to Clarehaven to leave Devonshire, and Mr. Tufton was enraptured by being called in to help with advice about the special license.

"My dear Dorothy," he assured her, enthusiastically, "you deserve the best—the very best."

"I don't want any one at the Vanity to know what's going to happen."

Tufton waved his hands to emphasize how right she was.

"It'll be a terrible blow to the public," he said, "and also to John Richards. You were his favorite, you know. Yes. And think of the beautiful women he has known! But you're right, you mustn't consider anybody except yourself."

"It's rather difficult for me to do that," Dorothy sighed.

"I know. I know. But you must do it. Clarehaven and I will come down with the license, and then ... my dear Dorothy, I really can't tell you how pleased I am. Do, do beg the dowager not to change that pergola. But I shall be down, I hope, some time in the spring."

"Of course."

"And what about Olive?" he asked.

"Poor Olive," she sighed. "And only last week she lost dear little San Toy. Yes, she'll miss me, I'm afraid, but she'll be glad I'm going to be so happy."

"All your friends will be glad."

"And now, Harry, please get me a really nice hansom, because I must simply tear round hard for frocks and frills."

Dorothy spent most of the money that Hausberg had made for her on old pieces of family jewelry; she also ordered numerous country tweeds; of frills she had enough.

A few days later Clarehaven, accompanied by Tufton and the special license, reached Brighton, where he and Dorothy were quietly married in the Church of the Ascension. Lady Clarehaven thought, when she drove back to the rooms to break the news to Olive, how few of the passers-by would think that she had just been married. She commented upon this to Tony, who replied with a laugh that Brighton was the last place in England where passers-by stopped to inquire if people were married.

"Tony," she said, with a pout, "I don't like that sort of joke, you know."

"Sorry, Doodles."

"And don't call me Doodles any more. Call me Dorothy."

Olive was, of course, tremendously surprised by her friend's announcement; but she tried not to show how much hurt she was by not having been taken into her confidence beforehand.

"I wanted it to be a complete secret," Dorothy explained. "And I didn't want all the papers in London to write a lot of rubbish about me."

"Darling, you can count on me as a pal to help you all I know. You've only got to tell me what you want."

Dorothy pulled herself together to do something of which she was rather ashamed, but for which she could perceive no alternative.

"Olive, I hate having to say what I'm going to say, and you must try to understand my point of view. I never intend to go near the stage-door of a theater again. I don't want to know any of my friends on the stage any more. If you want to help me, the best way you can help me is not to see me any more."

Clarehaven came into the room at this moment, and Dorothy rose to make her farewells.

"Good-by, Olive," she said. "We're going down to Clare Court to-morrow, and I don't expect we shall see each other again for a long time."

"I say," Clarehaven protested. "What rot, you know! Of course you'll meet again. Why, Olive must come down and recover from her next illness in Devonshire. We shall be pining for news of town by the spring, and—"

Lady Clarehaven looked at her husband, who was silent.

"Have you wired to your mother when we arrive to-morrow?" she asked.

"You're sure you won't drive down?"

"In January?" Dorothy exclaimed.

"Well, I've told the car to meet us at Exeter. That will only mean a seventy-mile drive—you won't mind that—and we'll get to Clare before dark."

"Forgive these family discussions in front of you," said Dorothy to her friend. Then shaking her hand formally, she went out of the room.

During the drive up to town, while Clarehaven was sitting back playing with his wife's wrist and looking fatuously content, he turned to her once and said:

"Dorothy, you were rather brutal with poor old Olive."

She withdrew her hand from his grasp, and not until he ceased condoling with Olive did she let him pick it up again.

"And oh dear, oh lord, oh my!" he exclaimed, "we must have the jolly old collie down at Clare."

"The collie?" she repeated. "What collie?"

"Your collie." He began to whistle the bewitching tune.

"Please don't. One hears it everywhere," she said, fretfully. "Olive will look after the dog. She's just lost her Pekinese."