“Poor Hugh!” she said, “I have treated you very badly. But how am I to help myself. We have waited for each other, as you say, these ten years, but you know well enough that my father and mother will never consent. They have made up their minds that I shall make a very different marriage.” “In other words,” said Macneillie between his teeth, “they have made up their minds to sell you to the highest bidder.” “No, no, you are so exaggerated, Hugh. Every one can’t look at the matter as you with your religious education in the Highlands look at it. Marriage is, after all, an arrangement affecting many people and interests. We are not living in a romance but in the prosaic nineteenth century. And I must not just please myself. I must think of what will best help on my career; my first duty is undoubtedly to help and to please my parents who have done so much for me.” “You didn’t think so ten years ago,” said Macneillie. “Ten years ago I was a foolish girl of seventeen. You had been very good to me when the year before I had been taken straight from school and set down alone and friendless in a travelling company. It was natural enough that I should love you then, Hugh--you who shielded me and helped me.” “But later on,” said Macneillie, clenching his hands, “when you no longer were lonely and friendless, when fame had come to you and all the world was at your feet, you very naturally needed me no longer, and your love died. Mine was never that sort of love--it will always live.” Christine Greville looked down with troubled face. Ambition and the importunities of her parents had for the time stifled her love. She felt cold and hard. His passionate constancy annoyed her. “I wish,” she said plaintively, “you would not speak like that, Hugh. I hate to think that I have pained you, or spoiled your life; but what am I to do? What am I to do?” He turned to her eagerly. “Be true to your best self, Christine. Trust the man who loved you long before this Sir Roderick Fenchurch had ever seen you. I’m not blind! I can see the advantages you might gain by marrying him! You would be very rich. You could have your own theatre, you would leap at once to a much higher position. But do you dream that such a marriage would be happy? Why, you have hardly a taste in common, and he is old enough to be your father.” “Oh, as to happiness,” she said, impatiently, “I have long ceased to expect that. Don’t think me brutal if I speak plainly. I have had your love all these years, and it has not made me really happy. And if I married you, Hugh, I should not be happy at all. You are much too good for me, your standard of life is far too high. You would not be able to draw me up, and I should be always longing to drag you down to my level. It would be a life of perpetual strain and tension.”