She was very ill indeed, and for four weeks confined to her room; and when she was able to consider a return to the hall, Roland found that her place had been taken by a Spanish singer with a mandolin and a wonderful dance. That was really a serious disappointment to the young couple, for during the month money had been going out and none coming in. For even when Denasia had been making twenty-five pounds a week, they had lived and dressed up to the last shilling; so that a month's enforced idleness and illness placed them deeply in debt and uncomfortably pressed for the wherewithal to meet debt.
Denasia also had been much weakened by her illness. Her fine form and colour were impaired, she was nervous and despondent; and a suffering, sickly wife was quite out of Roland's calculations and very much out of his sympathies. Poverty had a bad effect upon him. To be without money to buy the finest brand of cigars, to be annoyed by boarding-house keepers, tailors, and costumers, to have to buy medicines with cash when he was without his usual luxuries, was a condition of affairs that struck Roland as extremely improper for a young man of his family and education.
And he disliked now to interview managers. Mademoiselle Denasia was a recognised member of the profession which more than any other demands that everyone stand upon their merits; and Denasia had not been a very pronounced success. She remained just about where she had begun, and managers naturally thought that she had done the best of which she was capable. That best was not a phenomenal one, and Roland, as her husband and business agent, received no extraordinary amount of respect. He was offended where he had no reason for offence--offended often because everyone did not recognise him as a member of an old Cornish family and the son of an ex-lord mayor of London. Often he felt obliged, in order to satisfy his own self-respect, to make the fact known; and the chaff, or indifference, or incredulity, with which his claims were received made him change his opinions regarding the "jolly company of actors." In fact, he was undoubtedly at this period of Denasia's career her very worst enemy; for whatever Denasia might be, Roland and his pretensions were usually regarded as a great bore.