iasm for the
play, the real work he had put into rehearsals, his snubbing of Mr
Gillies and his wife, had all been only because he fancied himself in
his blown vanity to be in love with her. It was too ridiculous, and
despising him, hating herself, she decided that if it was acting he
wanted, acting he should have, and she burst into a torrent of tears
conjured up out of an entirely fictitious emotion.... At once Sir
Henry had the cue he was waiting for.... He leaped up and came over to
her with his hand on his heart.

Don't cry, little girl,' he said. 'Don't cry.... Harry is with you.
Harry only wants to be kind to her, and to help his poor little girl in
her trouble.... She shall be the greatest actress in the world.'

'Never!' thought Clara, her brain working more clearly now that she had
set up this screen of tears between them.

He patted her hand and caressed her hair, and was sublimely happy
again. He had half expected trouble from this unaccountable and
baffling creature, whose will and wits were stronger than his own. He
was still a little suspicious, but he took her tears for acquiescence
in his plans for her, and holding her in his arms he had the intense
satisfaction of thinking of Charles Mann as a filthy blackguard for
whom shooting was too clean an end.

XIV

VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF

Lord Verschoyle had imagined that by making for Art he would be able to
shake free of predatory designs. It was not long before he discovered
his mistake and that he had plunged into the very heart of the Society
which he desired to avoid, for the Imperium, as used by Lady Butcher
and Lady Bracebridge, was a powerful engine in the politico-financial
world which dominated London. Verschoyle in his simplicity had seen
the metropolis as consisting of purposeful mammas and missish daughters
bearing down upon him from all sides. Now he discovered that there was
more in it than that and that marriage was only one of many moves in a
complicated game.... Lady Bracebridge had a daughter. Lady Butcher
had a son whom she designed for a political career, upon which he had
entered as assistant secretary to an under-secretary. Perceiving that
Verschoyle easily lost his head, as in his apparent relations with
Clara Day, they designed to draw him into political society where heads
are finally and irrevocably lost.... He loathed politics and could not
understand them, but young Butcher haunted him, and Lady Brac