"You blame us English with the impertinences of a few boys out for a holiday. You have heard stories of actors and actresses having received injuries from persons out of the profession; and you necessarily think there must be a mutual antagonism between the classes." "I don’t think anything about it," she used to say; "I only know what my impression is, however it has been taught me. And I know that there is no sympathy between me and the people whom I try to amuse, and that they despise me and my calling. I don’t blame them for it; but how can you expect me to like them? I don’t say they are narrow-minded, or prejudiced; but I know that an English lady would not sit down to dinner with an actress, that an English mother would think her son lost if he married an actress; and that a girl in good society who marries an actor is thought to have done something equivalent to running away with her father’s footman." These were the bitter precepts which the Marchioness of Knottingley had left with her daughter; and they had been instilled into the girl at a time when beliefs become part of our flesh and blood. "There are ignorant and ill-educated women who think so," said Will, calmly; "but you do an injustice to women of education, and good taste, and intelligent sympathies, when you suppose that every one——" "Let us take your own mother," said Annie Brunel, hastily. "Would she be anxious, supposing she knew me, to introduce me to the rest of her acquaintances? Would she ask me to visit her? Would she be willing that I should be a companion to that pretty little Dove?" "I think I have answered all these questions before," said Will. "I tell you I can’t answer for all the women of England; but for those of them whom I respect I can answer, and my mother is one of them. Has she not already allowed Dove to make your acquaintance?" "Because I was a curiosity, and she was allowed to come and look at me in my cage," said the actress, with that cruel smile on her lips. "Miss Brunel," said Will, simply and frankly, "you are exhibiting far more prejudice than you will find in the women you speak about. And I don’t know whether you will forgive my saying that it seems a pity one of your years should already possess such suspicions and opinions of other people——" Wherewith she looked him straight in the face, with a clear searching glance of those big and honest eyes of hers, which would have made a less disinterested advocate falter. "Are you telling me what you believe to be true?" she said. "Could I have any object in deceiving you?" "You believe that your mother, a carefully pious and correct lady, who has lived all her life in the country, would dare to avow that she knew an actress?" "She would be proud to avow it." "Would she take me to church with her, and give me a seat in her pew, before all her neighbours?" "Certainly she would." "And what would they think?"