It was a merry tea-party. Lucy rattled away bewitchingly, overpowering Mr. Spanner like an embodied brandy and soda. The slang of the green room and the sporting papers rolled musically off her tongue, grating on Frank's ear like the scraping of slate pencils. He had not insight enough to divine that she was accentuating her vulgar acquirements to torture him. Spanner went at last--for the Oriental boards claimed him--leaving behind him as nearly definite a promise of the part as a stage-manager can ever bring himself to utter. Lucy accompanied him downstairs. When she returned, Frank was still sitting as she had left him--one hand playing with the spoon in his cup, the rest of the body lethargic, immobile. She bent over him tenderly. "Frank!" she whispered. He shivered and looked up at the lovely face, daubed with rouge and pencilled at the eyebrows with black--as for the edification of the distant "gods." He lowered his eyes again, and said slowly: "Lucy, I have come back to marry you. What date will be most convenient to you?" "You want to marry me," she echoed in low tones. "All the same!" A strange wonderful light came into her eyes. The big lashes were threaded with glistening tears. She put her little hand caressingly upon his hair, and was silent. "Yes! it is an old promise. It shall be kept." "Ah!" She drew her hand away with an inarticulate cry. "Like a duty dance, but you do not love me?" He ignored the point. "I am rich now--my father has unexpectedly become Lord Redhill--you probably heard it!" "You don't love me! You can't love me!" It sounded like the cry of a soul in despair. "So there's no need for either of us to earn a living." "But you don't love me! You only want to save me." "Well, of course Lord Redhill wouldn't like his daughter-in-law to be--" "The Principal Boy--ha! ha! ha! But what--ho! ho! ho! I must laugh, Frank, old man, it _is_ so funny--what about the Principal Boy? Do you think he'd cotton to the idea of marrying a peer in embryo! Not if Lucy Gray knows it; no, by Jove! Why, when your coronet came along, I should have to leave the stage, or else people 'ud be saying I couldn't act worth a cent. They'd class me with Lady London and Lady Hansard--oh, Lord! Fancy me on the Drury Lane bills--Prince Prettypet, Lady Redhill. And then, great Scot, think whom they'd class you with. Ha! ha! ha! No, my boy, I'm not going to marry a microcephalous idiot. Ho! ho! ho! I wish somebody would put all this in a farce." "Do I understand that you wish to break off the engagement?" Frank said slowly, a note of surprise in his voice.