She smiled sadly. "I'm afraid you can get along without me in every way except one, only too easily." "Why did you lead me on, if you weren't in earnest?" "Lead you on?" "You asked me back to the flat. You gave me every encouragement. Obviously somebody is paying for this flat, so why shouldn't I?" "Lord Clarehaven!" exclaimed Dorothy, with the stern grandeur of an Atlantic cliff rebuffing a wave. "You have said enough." She rang the bell and asked Effie, the maid whose attentions she shared with Olive, to show his lordship the door. His poor lordship left Halfmoon Mansions in such perturbation that he forgot to slip the usual sovereign into Effie's hand, and she cordially agreed with her mistress when he was gone that kind hearts are indeed more than coronets. Dorothy's simple faith in her own abilities had received such a shock that she began to cry; but it was restored by a sudden suspicion that she possessed a latent power for tragedy that might take her out of the squalid world of the Vanity into the ether of the legitimate drama. She had never suspected this inner fountain that grief had thus unsealed, and she let her tears go trickling down her cheeks with as much pleasure as a small boy who has found a watering-can on a secluded garden path. "Don't carry on so, miss," Effie begged. "Men are brutes, and that's what all us poor women have to learn sooner or later. Don't take on about his lordship. A fine lordship, I'm sure. Give me plain Smith, if that's a lordship. Look at your poor eyes, miss, and don't cry any more." Dorothy did look at her poor eyes, and immediately compromised with her emotions by going out and ordering a new dress. When she came back Olive, who had been given a heightened account of the scene by Effie, was exquisitely sympathetic; and the great man, when he was informed of Clarehaven's disgraceful offer, was full of good worldly advice and consolation. "I think you can rely upon your powers of catalysis, Dorothy," he said. She did not think her failure to understand such a strange word reflected upon her education, and asked him what it meant. "In unchemical English, as unchemical as your own nice light-brown hair, _you_ won't change; but if I'm not much mistaken you'll play the very deuce with Master Clarehaven's mental constitution." This was encouraging; if Dorothy's faith in her beauty and abilities had been slightly shaken by Clarehaven's omission to marry her, the loss was more than made up for by an added belief in her own importance and in the beauty of her character.