does not matter to him whether the public applaud or not, whether they forget or not.  He has always before him these evidences of his genius; and among his friends he can choose his fit audience.  Even when he is an old man, and listening to the praise of all the young fellows who have caught the taste of the public, he can, at all events, show something of his work as testimony of what he was.  But an actress, the moment she leaves the stage, is a snuffed-out candle.  She has her stage-dresses to prove that she acted certain parts; and she may have a scrap-book with cuttings of criticisms from the provincial papers!  You know, dear Keith, all this is very heart-sickening; and I am quite aware that it will trouble you, as it troubles me, and sometimes makes me ashamed of myself; but then it is true, and it is better for both of us that it should be known.  I could not undertake to be a hypocrite all my life.  I must confess to you, whatever be the consequences, that I distinctly made a mistake when I thought it was such an easy thing to adopt a whole new set of opinions and tastes and habits.  The old Adam, as your Scotch ministers would say, keeps coming back, to jog my elbow as an old familiar friend.  And you would not have me conceal the fact from you?  I know how difficult it will be for you to understand or sympathize with me.  You have never been brought up to a profession, every inch of your progress in which you have to contest against rivals; and you don’t know how jealous one is of one’s position when it is gained.  I think I would rather be made an old woman or sixty to-morrow morning, than get up and go out and find my name printed in small letters in the theatre-bills.  And if I try to imagine what my feelings would be if I were to retire from the stage, surely that is in your interest as well as mine.  How would you like to be tied for life to a person who was continually looking back to her past career with regret, and who was continually looking around her for objects of jealous and envious anger?  Really, I try to do my duty by everybody.  All the time I was at Castle Dare I tried to picture myself living there, and taking an interest in the fishing, and the farms, and so on; and if I was haunted by the dread that, instead of thinking about the fishing and the farms, I should be thinking of the triumphs of the actress who had taken my place in the attention of the public, I had to recognize the fact.  It is wretched and pitiable, no doubt; but look at my training.  If you tell me to be true to myself—­that is myself.  And at all events I feel more contented that I have made a frank-confession.”

Surely it was a fair and reasonable letter?  But the answer that came to it had none of its pleasant common-sense.  It was all a wild appeal—­a calling on her not to fall away from the resolves she had made—­not to yield to those despondent moods.  There was but the one way to get rid of her doubts and hesitations; let her at once cast aside the theatre, and all its associations and malign influences, and become his wife, and he would take her by the hand and lead her away from that besetting temptation.  Could she forget the day on which she gave him the red rose?  She was a woman; she could not forget.