“Victoria! Do you refuse to do your duty to society and to your parents?” Victoria was mildly annoyed. “There, now _you_ are going to be sentimental!” she protested. The marchioness rose to her feet in real anger. “You shameful, depraved, ungrateful child! You wish to break your mother’s heart!” Victoria darted a strange look at her mother, which the marchioness was unable to meet. Then she observed, quietly: “Don’t you think the less we say about hearts the better, mamma?” The marchioness was opening her lips to reply, when her face suddenly changed, a beautiful smile replacing the angry frown. Hammond had just entered the gallery. SCENE XI “AND WILL SHORTLY TAKE PLACE” It is generally the first impulse of a man who has been rejected by the woman he loves to offer himself to the woman who loves him. When the sun has set the light of the moon becomes precious. John Hammond did not believe that the Lady Victoria Mauleverer did him the honor to love him after the fashion in which he loved Belle Yorke. But the frankness with which she conducted their mutual flirtation made him think of her as more sincere than the over-innocent maidens who pretended to turn shy at his approach, and practised the blushes which they had been taught by a Bond Street professor at a guinea a blush. He felt that there was something flattering to him in her disdain of the small arts of cajolery, and he told himself that the preference which she so plainly showed for him must needs be genuine. It does not require very much to convince a man of any self-confidence that he possesses a woman’s regard. The very cynicism with which Victoria discussed their relations might be the cloak of a deeper feeling, which she was too proud to confess until its return was assured. In his present mood, however, Hammond felt no desire to penetrate beneath that surface good-comradeship, which was all that either he or Victoria had yet shown to the other. He could not have gone from his interview with Belle to make love to another woman. He, no more than Victoria, desired to be sentimental. Nevertheless, it soothed him to think that this woman, who was willing to meet him in his own spirit of indifference, might be secretly more fond of him than he was of her. It seemed to him that the die was cast, and that he could not too soon put it out of his own power to recall the throw. He had fought out the struggle between Love and Ambition, and in the moment of surrendering to Love, Love had failed him. Well, Ambition was left. The marchioness had correctly diagnosed the symptoms, though she had little idea of their cause. John Hammond had come to propose to Victoria. It only remained for the forethoughtful parent to get herself out of the way. “It is too bad of you, Mr. Hammond!” she exclaimed, with the playfulness of a boa-constrictor. “I believe you knew I was here, and waited down below on purpose for me to go away.” Hammond smiled rather wearily.