“What do you think of the likeness?” asked Sefton, lolling against a tall Versailles chair, and contemplating the brilliant face in the picture with a smile.
“I suppose it is a very good likeness,” said Sophy, “but of a vulgar face—very handsome, no doubt; nobody can deny that—but quite peuple.”
“Yes, it is peuple. That is one of its charms. It has all the fire and freshness of an unsophisticated race, generations of fishermen, sailors, gondoliers, all that there is of a frank free life between sea and sky. You can’t get such beauty as that from a race reared indoors. It is an open-air loveliness, as rich in grace and colouring as one of those sea-flowers that unfold their living petals under the clear bright water.”
“You admire her very much?” faltered Sophy.
“Yes, I admire her very much. You and I have got on so well together, Miss Marchant, that I feel I may talk to you with all the freedom of friendship—and confide in you as I have confided in no one else. I do admire that woman, have admired her ever since she made her first appearance at the Apollo. I began by liking to hear her sing, liking to watch her bright spontaneous acting, like the acting of a clever child in its naturalness. Even her beauty charmed me less than that delicious spontaneity which struck a new chord in the genius of the stage. I went night after night to see her and hear her, without fear of danger; and one day I awoke and found myself her slave. I love her as I never loved before—not even when I used to fancy myself in love with your charming sister. Against every other love, a selfish desire to retain my liberty, a vacillating temper, which made the desire of tomorrow unlike the desire of yesterday, have prevailed; but against the love I bear that woman,” pointing to the laughing face in that picture, “reason has been powerless. Another man in my position might have tried to do what other men have been doing, ever since the first girl-Desdemona disgusted John Evelyn and began the long line of actresses who have charmed the civilized world. Another man might have tried to win her by dishonourable means. I was not base enough for that.”
Sophy crimsoned, remembering that dark story of the farmer’s daughter, which Nancy had related to her, that well-meaning woman not being over scrupulous in her communications to the ear of girlhood.
She waited silently, and Sefton went on, looking at the portrait, not at the woman to whom he was talking. An angry glow was on his cheek. An angry light was in his eyes. The thought of the social sacrifice he had been prepared to make and the futility of his offer lashed him to fury.
“I would not degrade her by a dishonourable proposal. No—though I knew she was not spotless—though I knew her as the mother of a nameless child. She was all the world to me, and what social consideration should a man set against that which is his all of happiness or hope? I asked her to be my wife, offered her my place in society, my passionate love, a life’s devotion; and she refused me—refused me after more than a year of friendship, a friendship which had seemingly brought us very near to each other.”
“She refused you?” exclaimed Sophy, beholding in one comprehensive glance this charming house in Tite Street, the Manor, and all its belongings dead and alive, together with this remarkably handsome and agreeable man to whom these things belonged! “She refused you! Why, what a preposterous minx she must be!”
“Yes, that’s the word, Miss Marchant. It seems preposterous, doesn’t it, that a Venetian peasant, with only her voice and good looks—and the hazardous fortunes of an opera singer—should refuse an English gentleman with a handsome rent-roll. But the thing is true all the same. She refused me. Can you guess why?”
“I can only imagine that she is a brainless idiot,” said Sophy, feeling that she might be tempted to take out her bonnet pin and run it into that vivid face, if it were not for the glass which protected the picture.
She was too angry with Signora Vivanti for having won Mr. Sefton’s affections to be grateful to her for having refused his hand.
“There is always a reason for everything,” said Sefton, after a backward glance at the other room, which showed him that there was no one near enough or unoccupied enough to overhear or observe him; the banjoist being still the centre of attraction, and everybody grouped about him in the neighbourhood of the piano. “There is always a reason if one will only look for it. Signora Vivanti refused me because she was in love with another man, the man she knew and loved in Venice, the man who brought her to London and established her in the house she occupies, and had her trained for the stage. Forgive me, Miss Marchant, if I go a step further and say the man who is the father of her son!”
Sophy drew herself up with an offended air, and flashed an angry look at him.
“You have no right to talk to me in this way, Mr. Sefton. I don’t understand why you should select me for your confidante,” she said icily, moving towards the next room.
“Pray forgive me. You are clever and sympathetic. I have no sister, and in certain crises of life a man feels the need of a woman’s sympathy. And then there were other reasons; or at least there was another reason.”
He stopped, embarrassed, looking at her with a curious hesitation; looking from her to the group by the piano, where Eve’s face shone out among the rest, smiling at the American’s last ebullition.
“You are hinting at something dreadful,” Sophy said, with a scared look. “Do you
