"You imagine I have a fair field?" asked the Count, rather timidly.
"Oh, yes!" said Will, with a laugh, in which there was just a touch of bitterness. "But that is not the way you used to talk about women, and marriage, and so forth. Do you remember how you gloated over the saying of that newspaper man who was at the ’Juliet’ supper—about being ’sewn up in a theological sack with a partner for life?’ I suppose you were only whistling in the dark, to scare the ghosts away, and now——"
There was no need to complete the sentence. The doleful look on the Count’s rubicund face told its own tale. He shook his head, rather sadly, and contemplatively stirred his Moselle with a bit of biscuit.
"It’s time a man like me was married. I have plenty of money to give my wife her own way: we shan’t quarrel. There’s that big house standing empty; you can’t expect people to come and visit you, if you’ve nobody to receive them. Look how perfectly Miss Brunel could do that. Look at the grace of her demeanour, and her courtesy, and all that: why, though she’s ever so little a thing, she looks like an empress when she comes into a room. I never could get elsewhere such a wife as she would make."
"Doubtless not; but the point is to get her," said Will, almost defiantly—he did not know whether to laugh at or be indignant with the Count’s cool assumption.
"I tell you I would marry her if she was nothing but what she is——" the Count said, vehemently, and then he suddenly paused, with a look of frightened embarrassment on his face.
"How could she be anything else than what she is?" asked Will, carelessly: he had not observed the Count’s trepidation.
"Oh—well—ah—if she were nothing more than an ordinary actress, without the manners of a lady, I should be inclined to marry her, on account of her—her sweetness of disposition, you know."
"Laugh as you please," said the Count, with a touch of offended dignity, "there are few men in my position who would marry an actress. If I _should_ marry Miss Brunel, I should consider that while she did me a favour I paid her quite as great a compliment. Look at the estimation in which actresses are held. Look at those women of the —— theatre; at Miss ——, and Miss ——, and Miss ——. Don’t the public know all about them? And the public won’t stop to pick out one respectable actress from the lot, and be just to her. They all suffer for the sins of the majority; and any actress, whatever may be her personal character, ought to know that she lies under the ban of social suspicion, and——"