urage Mr. Sherringham--there's one way to help him; and
perhaps it won't be a worse way for a gentleman of your good nature that
it will help me at the same time. Can't I look to you, dear Mr. Dormer,
to see that he does come to the theatre to-night--that he doesn't feel
himself obliged to stay away?"

"What danger is there of his staying away?" Nick asked.

"If he's bent on sacrifices that's a very good one to begin with,"
Miriam observed.

"That's the mad, bad way she talks to him--she has forbidden the dear
unhappy gentleman the house!" her mother cried. "She brought it up to
him just now at the door--before Miss Dormer: such very odd form! She
pretends to impose her commands upon him."

"Oh he'll be there--we're going to dine together," said Nick. And when
Miriam asked him what that had to do with it he went on: "Why we've
arranged it; I'm going, and he won't let me go alone."

"You're going? I sent you no places," his sitter objected.

"Yes, but I've got one. Why didn't you, after all I've done for you?"

She beautifully thought of it. "Because I'm so good. No matter," she
added, "if Mr. Sherringham comes I won't act."

"Won't you act for me?"

"She'll act like an angel," Mrs. Rooth protested. "She might do, she
might be, anything in all the world; but she won't take common pains."

"Of one thing there's no doubt," said Miriam: "that compared with the
rest of us--poor passionless creatures--mamma does know what she wants."

"And what's that?" Nick inquired, chalking on.

"She wants everything."

"Never, never--I'm much more humble," retorted the old woman; upon
which her daughter requested her to give then to Mr. Dormer, who was a
reasonable man and an excellent judge, a general idea of the scope of
her desires.

As, however, Mrs. Rooth, sighing and deprecating, was not quick to
acquit herself, the girl tried a short cut to the truth with the abrupt
demand: "Do you believe for a single moment he'd marry me?"

"Why he has proposed to you--you've told me yourself--a dozen times."

"Proposed what to me?" Miriam rang out. "I've told you _that_ neither a
dozen times nor once, because I've never understood. He has made
wonderful speeches, but has never been serious."

"You told me he had been in the seventh heaven of devotion, especially
that night we went to the foyer of the Francais," Mrs. Rooth insisted.

"Do you call the seventh heaven of devotion serious? He's in love with
me, _je le veux bien_;