is good-looking, and she is clever.”
“Clever!” he echoed. “Profound! She has a most unusual intellect. She stands alone.”
“Like her mother’s silk dresses,” I murmured, half under my breath.
He took no notice of my flippant remark, but went on with his rhapsody. “Such depth; such penetration! And then, how sympathetic! Why, even to a mere casual acquaintance like myself, she is so kind, so discerning!”
“ARE you such a casual acquaintance?” I inquired, with a smile. (It might have shocked Aunt Fanny to hear me; but THAT is the way we ask a young man his intentions nowadays.)
He stopped short and hesitated. “Oh, quite casual,” he replied, almost stammering. “Most casual, I assure you.... I have never ventured to do myself the honour of supposing that… that Miss Tepping could possibly care for me.”
“There is such a thing as being TOO modest and unassuming,” I answered. “It sometimes leads to unintentional cruelty.”
“No, do you think so?” he cried, his face falling all at once. “I should blame myself bitterly if that were so. Dr. Cumberledge, you are her cousin. DO you gather that I have acted in such a way as to—to lead Miss Tepping to suppose I felt any affection for her?”
I laughed in his face. “My dear boy,” I answered, laying one hand on his shoulder, “may I say the plain truth? A blind bat could see you are madly in love with her.”
His mouth twitched. “That’s very serious!” he answered, gravely; “very serious.”
“It is,” I responded, with my best paternal manner, gazing blankly in front of me.
He stopped short again. “Look here,” he said, facing me. “Are you busy? No? Then come back with me to my rooms; and—I’ll make a clean breast of it.”
“By all means,” I assented. “When one is young—and foolish—I have often noticed, as a medical man, that a drachm of clean breast is a magnificent prescription.”
He walked back by my side, talking all the way of Daphne’s many adorable qualities. He exhausted the dictionary for laudatory adjectives. By the time I reached his door it was not HIS fault if I had not learned that the angelic hierarchy were not in the running with my pretty cousin for graces and virtues. I felt that Faith, Hope, and Charity ought to resign at once in favour of Miss Daphne Tepping, promoted.
He took me into his comfortably furnished rooms—the luxurious rooms of a rich young bachelor, with taste as well as money—and offered me a partaga. Now, I have long observed, in the course of my practice, that a choice cigar assists a man in taking a philosophic outlook on the question under discussion; so I accepted the partaga. He sat down opposite me and pointed to a photograph in the centre of his mantlepiece. “I am engaged to that lady,” he put in, shortly.
“So I anticipated,” I answered, lighting up.
He started and looked surprised. “Why, what made you guess it?” he inquired.
I smiled the calm smile of superior age—I was some eight years or so his senior. “My dear fellow,” I murmured, “what else could prevent you from proposing to Daphne—when you are so undeniably in love with her?”
“A great deal,” he answered. “For example, the sense of my own utter unworthiness.”
“One’s own unworthiness,” I replied, “though doubtless real—p’f, p’f—is a barrier that most of us can readily get over when our admiration for a particular lady waxes strong enough. So THIS is the prior attachment!” I took the portrait down and scanned it.
“Unfortunately, yes. What do you think of her?”
I scrutinised the features. “Seems a nice enough little thing,” I answered. It was an innocent face, I admit; very frank and girlish.
He leaned forward eagerly. “That’s just it. A nice enough little thing! Nothing in the world to be said against her. While Daphne—Miss Tepping, I mean—” His silence was ecstatic.
I examined the photograph still more closely. It displayed a lady of twenty or thereabouts, with a weak face, small, vacant features, a feeble chin, a good-humoured, simple mouth, and a wealth of golden hair that seemed to strike a keynote.
“In the theatrical profession?” I inquired at last, looking up.
He hesitated. “Well, not exactly,” he answered.
I pursed my lips and blew a ring. “Music-hall stage?” I went on, dubiously.
He nodded. “But a girl is not necessarily any the less a lady because she sings at a music-hall,” he added, with warmth, displaying an evident desire to be just to his betrothed, however much he admired Daphne.
“Certainly not,” I admitted. “A lady is a lady; no occupation can in itself unladify her.... But on the music-hall stage, the odds, one must admit, are on the whole against her.”
“Now, THERE you show prejudice!”
“One may be quite unprejudiced,” I answered, “and yet allow that connection with the music-halls does not, as such, afford clear proof that a girl is a compound of all the virtues.”
“I think she’s a good girl,” he retorted, slowly.
“Then why do you want to throw her over?” I inquired.
“I don’t. That’s just it. On the contrary, I mean to keep my word and marry her.”
“IN ORDER to keep your word?” I suggested.
He nodded. “Precisely. It is a point of honour.”
“That’s a poor ground of marriage,” I went on. “Mind, I don’t want for a moment to influence you, as Daphne’s cousin. I want to get at the truth of the situation. I don’t even know what Daphne thinks of you. But you promised me a clean breast. Be a man and bare it.”
He bared it instantly. “I thought I was in love with this girl, you see,” he went on, “till I saw Miss Tepping.”
“That makes a difference,” I admitted.
“And I couldn’t bear to break her heart.”
“Heaven forbid!” I cried. “It is the one unpardonable sin. Better anything than that.” Then I grew practical. “Father’s consent?”
“MY father’s? IS it likely? He expects me to marry into some distinguished English family.”
I hummed a moment. “Well, out with it!” I exclaimed, pointing my cigar at him.
He leaned back in his chair and told me the whole story. A pretty girl; golden hair; introduced to her by a friend; nice, simple little thing; mind and heart above the irregular stage on to which she had been driven by poverty alone; father dead; mother in reduced circumstances. “To keep the home together, poor Sissie decided—”
“Precisely so,” I murmured, knocking off my ash. “The usual self-sacrifice! Case quite normal! Everything en regle!”
“You don’t mean to say you doubt it?” he cried, flushing up, and evidently regarding
