He stopped short again. "Look here," he said, facing me. "Are you busy?

No? Then come back with me to my rooms; and--I'll make a clean breast of it."

"By all means," I a.s.sented. "When one is young--and foolish--I have often noticed, as a medical man, that a drachm of clean breast is a magnificent prescription."

He walked back by my side, talking all the way of Daphne's many adorable qualities. He exhausted the dictionary for laudatory adjectives. By the time I reached his door it was not HIS fault if I had not learned that the angelic hierarchy were not in the running with my pretty cousin for graces and virtues. I felt that Faith, Hope, and Charity ought to resign at once in favour of Miss Daphne Tepping, promoted.

He took me into his comfortably furnished rooms--the luxurious rooms of a rich young bachelor, with taste as well as money--and offered me a partaga. Now, I have long observed, in the course of my practice, that a choice cigar a.s.sists a man in taking a philosophic outlook on the question under discussion; so I accepted the partaga. He sat down opposite me and pointed to a photograph in the centre of his mantlepiece. "I am engaged to that lady," he put in, shortly.

"So I antic.i.p.ated," I answered, lighting up.

He started and looked surprised. "Why, what made you guess it?" he inquired.

I smiled the calm smile of superior age--I was some eight years or so his senior. "My dear fellow," I murmured, "what else could prevent you from proposing to Daphne--when you are so undeniably in love with her?"

"A great deal," he answered. "For example, the sense of my own utter unworthiness."

"One's own unworthiness," I replied, "though doubtless real--p'f, p'f--is a barrier that most of us can readily get over when our admiration for a particular lady waxes strong enough. So THIS is the prior attachment!" I took the portrait down and scanned it.

"Unfortunately, yes. What do you think of her?"

I scrutinised the features. "Seems a nice enough little thing," I answered. It was an innocent face, I admit; very frank and girlish.

He leaned forward eagerly. "That's just it. A nice enough little thing!

Nothing in the world to be said against her. While Daphne--Miss Tepping, I mean--" His silence was ecstatic.

I examined the photograph still more closely. It displayed a lady of twenty or thereabouts, with a weak face, small, vacant features, a feeble chin, a good-humoured, simple mouth, and a wealth of golden hair that seemed to strike a keynote.

"In the theatrical profession?" I inquired at last, looking up.

He hesitated. "Well, not exactly," he answered.

I pursed my lips and blew a ring. "Music-hall stage?" I went on, dubiously.

He nodded. "But a girl is not necessarily any the less a lady because she sings at a music-hall," he added, with warmth, displaying an evident desire to be just to his betrothed, however much he admired Daphne.

"Certainly not," I admitted. "A lady is a lady; no occupation can in itself unladify her.... But on the music-hall stage, the odds, one must admit, are on the whole against her."

"Now, THERE you show prejudice!"

"One may be quite unprejudiced," I answered, "and yet allow that connection with the music-halls does not, as such, afford clear proof that a girl is a compound of all the virtues."

"I think she's a good girl," he retorted, slowly.

"Then why do you want to throw her over?" I inquired.

"I don't. That's just it. On the contrary, I mean to keep my word and marry her."

"IN ORDER to keep your word?" I suggested.

He nodded. "Precisely. It is a point of honour."

"That's a poor ground of marriage," I went on. "Mind, I don't want for a moment to influence you, as Daphne's cousin. I want to get at the truth of the situation. I don't even know what Daphne thinks of you. But you promised me a clean breast. Be a man and bare it."

He bared it instantly. "I thought I was in love with this girl, you see," he went on, "till I saw Miss Tepping."

"That makes a difference," I admitted.

"And I couldn't bear to break her heart."

"Heaven forbid!" I cried. "It is the one unpardonable sin. Better anything than that." Then I grew practical. "Father's consent?"

"MY father's? IS it likely? He expects me to marry into some distinguished English family."

I hummed a moment. "Well, out with it!" I exclaimed, pointing my cigar at him.

He leaned back in his chair and told me the whole story. A pretty girl; golden hair; introduced to her by a friend; nice, simple little thing; mind and heart above the irregular stage on to which she had been driven by poverty alone; father dead; mother in reduced circ.u.mstances. "To keep the home together, poor Sissie decided--"

"Precisely so," I murmured, knocking off my ash. "The usual self-sacrifice! Case quite normal! Everything en regle!"

"You don't mean to say you doubt it?" he cried, flushing up, and evidently regarding me as a hopeless cynic. "I do a.s.sure you, Dr.

c.u.mberledge, the poor child--though miles, of course, below Miss Tepping's level--is as innocent, and as good--"

"As a flower in May. Oh, yes; I don't doubt it. How did you come to propose to her, though?"

He reddened a little. "Well, it was almost accidental," he said, sheepishly. "I called there one evening, and her mother had a headache and went up to bed. And when we two were left alone, Sissie talked a great deal about her future and how hard her life was. And after a while she broke down and began to cry. And then--"

I cut him short with a wave of my hand. "You need say no more," I put in, with a sympathetic face. "We have all been there."

We paused a moment, while I puffed smoke at the photograph again.

"Well," I said at last, "her face looks to me really simple and nice. It is a good face. Do you see her often?"

"Oh, no; she's on tour."

"In the provinces?"

"M'yes; just at present, at Scarborough."

"But she writes to you?"

"Every day."

"Would you think it an unpardonable impertinence if I made bold to ask whether it would be possible for you to show me a specimen of her letters?"

He unlocked a drawer and took out three or four. Then he read one through, carefully. "I don't think," he said, in a deliberative voice, "it would be a serious breach of confidence in me to let you look through this one. There's really nothing in it, you know--just the ordinary average every-day love-letter."

I glanced through the little note. He was right. The conventional hearts and darts epistle. It sounded nice enough: "Longing to see you again; so lonely in this place; your dear sweet letter; looking forward to the time; your ever-devoted Sissie."

"That seems straight," I answered. "However, I am not quite sure. Will you allow me to take it away, with the photograph? I know I am asking much. I want to show it to a lady in whose tact and discrimination I have the greatest confidence."