‘You’ll hear from me soon,’ said the actress, as she seated herself in the train, and glided along the iron road till London was reached in safety and in good time. Nor were Wentworth and his wife sorry at his decision. They infinitely preferred him as he was, and thus the matter was allowed to drop, to the infinite regret of a sharp firm of City lawyers, who were quite ready to do battle for the lad’s right, with a chance of making money out of the case somehow before they had done with it. The family lawyers were quite content to let things remain as they were. They had lost money by the family, and had no more wish to trouble themselves about their concerns. There was no chance of anyone coming forward to claim the family honours, and the name of Strahan was dropped out of the book of the baronetage of England for ever. CHAPTER XXX. ROSE RETIRES FROM THE STAGE. ‘I think,’ said Rose to her husband that night, ‘I shall give up the stage. I have been without an engagement long; I have refused everything of the kind.’ ‘Yet, darling, you are not growing old.’ ‘No, it is not that.’ ‘But what?’ ‘That I care less and less for the artificial atmosphere of the stage. We lead such a conventional life and breathe such a conventional air; there is so much of insincerity. “Suppose any given theatre,” writes Mr. Thomas Archer in one of his clever essays, “suppose any given theatre suddenly turned into a Palace of Truth, and all the members of the company forced to state their true opinion of each other’s performances, the Palace of Truth would be a pandemonium.” And then there are other considerations.’ ‘For instance?’ ‘Well, to begin with, the atmosphere of self-consciousness in which the actor lives and moves and has his being. Mr. Henry James tells us the artist performs great feats in a dream; we must not wake him up lest he should lose his balance. The actor, alas! has always to be wide awake—to think of the applause to be won. I am sure too much of that sort of life cannot be good for anyone.’ ‘And I have long been expecting you to say as much.’ ‘But you are not sorry, are you?’ ‘On the contrary; it is the very thing I have been looking for all along. It is nice to feel when the public applaud an actress that she is your own; but how much nicer to feel as I do now,’ said Wentworth, with a loving caress, ‘that she is all my own! You were happy on the stage; you will be ten times happier off it.’ ‘Ah, that I know well enough.’