"I can't say as how I do."
"I am Agnes Graham."
Lizzie was moved to genuine emotion. She rose from her chair in a flutter of excitement. She became more awkward than ever.
"Think of me not knowing you! I ought to, seeing how often I've seen your picture. I beg your pardon, Miss Graham, I'm sure, but won't you take a chair?"
"Thank you, for the present I'll stand." She eyed the other steadfastly; it seemed as if the more she gazed the more her wonder grew. "I'm afraid that I have come to you on a foolish errand, and that you will laugh at me before I've done, if you don't do worse."
"Laugh at you, Miss Graham. That I'm sure I won't."
"May I ask, Miss Emmett, if you know anything of my private history?"
"Me!" The inquiry might have conveyed a reproach, Lizzie's denial was uttered with so much earnestness. "I don't know nothing at all about you, miss, except what's in the papers."
"Except what's in the papers!" Miss Graham smiled, not sunnily. "In that case you know more about me than I do about myself. Still, I am disposed to inflict on you a fragment of personal history. You might not think it, but, in spite of what is in the papers, I'm a dreamer."
"Indeed, miss? I'm a dreamer too."
The words were spoken so simply that it seemed difficult to suspect the speaker of a second intention. Miss Graham, however, shot at her a sudden doubting glance. Her tone became harder.
"I trust, for both our sakes, that our dreams do not run on the same lines. I have always dreamed of a home; of a harbour at last; of peace at the end; of a time when I shall be able to take my seat among the best, with a mind at ease. It may sound odd, but I have always looked forward to making a good marriage."
"I should think, miss, that you might have done that over and over again."
"I might, but I haven't. But lately I have thought that I might. I am sick of the stage, sick to death!"
She gave a little passionate gesture. In her voice there was a ring of sincerity.
"I shouldn't have thought, miss, that you would ever have been sick of the stage."
"You wouldn't have thought! What do you know of it? You!" She cast a look at Lizzie which was as scornful as her words. Then glanced at the empty rust-worn grate. Then again met Lizzie face to face. "I will be as frank with you as I would ask you to be frank with me. I have dreamed-I use the word advisedly! – I say that I have dreamed of being Countess of Bermondsey."
"Countess of Bermondsey! I'd like to lay, miss, that you could be anything you please!"
Miss Graham's lips were drawn close together.
"Are you laughing at me?"
"Laughing at you! Me, miss! I shouldn't think of doing such a thing."
"Then may I ask you to be as candid as myself? Before this my dream might have been something more solid than a dream, if it had not been for you."
"For me!"
Lizzie was open-eyed and open-mouthed.
"Pray don't let us play the actress off the boards. Don't you think we might confine that sort of thing to our hours of business?"
"But I don't understand you, miss. Do you mean that you might have been the Countess of Bermondsey if it had not been for me?"
Miss Graham's eyes were as keen and cold as the other's were hot and eager.
"I see that a denial is trembling on your lips. Pray don't trouble yourself to utter it. Is that the sort of person you are? I assure you that, in this case, at least, you make a mistake; for unfortunately I speak from knowledge." She stopped, then resumed with a strain of passion in her voice which, almost with every word, became more strenuous. "The Earl of Bermondsey, as, doubtless, you are aware, although for reasons of your own you may feign ignorance, has, for some time, been a friend of mine. I had reason to believe that he might become more, until, recently, the outward tokens of his friendship waned. I looked for the reason. I found it. He has, lately, become an assiduous patron of the Cerulean Theatre. This morning I taxed him with it. He offered no denial. I asked him for the lady's name. He floundered-as you may be aware his lordship is an adept at floundering-and, as he floundered, a piece of paper fell from his pocket on to the floor. I picked it up. On it was a lady's name and her address. I asked if she was the attraction at the Cerulean. He owned that she was. He said things of her," the speaker's voice quivered, "which I do not care to recount at second hand to you. 'Lizzie Emmett, 14 Hercules Buildings, Westminster,' was on the paper, and it was of you those things were said."
"Me!"
The actress moved slightly away from the fireplace, speaking with a strength of feeling and an eloquence of gesture which, had she been capable of such efforts on the stage, would have gained her immortality.
"It may be sport to you-I daresay it is, there was a time when I used to think that sort of thing was sport-but it is death to me. Death! He has as good as promised that I shall be his wife. I have staked everything upon the fulfilment of his promise. Nothing can compensate me for his breaking it. I won't try to make you understand why-you mightn't understand me if I tried! But if he does, I'll go under-under! If you only knew what I've endured since he's begun to tire, you'd pity me. I'm here to ask you to pity me now. We're both women-be generous-I'll be sworn it's not of much consequence to you-be good to me. If you'll only send him back to me, help me to be his wife, there's nothing I won't do for you, in reason or out of reason. I swear it. I'll put it down in black and white in any form you like!" With trembling hands she caught hold of Lizzie's shabby sleeve. "But don't be cruel to me-don't be cruel!"
Lizzie shrunk away from her.
"You're making a mistake, Miss Graham, a big mistake!"
"Don't say that, for pity's sake, don't say that! Show mercy to me, as one day you may want some other woman to show mercy to you."
Lizzie withdrew herself still farther from the other's eager pleading.
"You've got it all wrong, I'm not the girl you're taking me for. I don't know no Earl of Bermondsey, nor yet no Earl of anything, and I don't want to."
"Why should you deny it?"
"Because it's the truth. I'm straight, I am, and I always have been, and I always mean to be, and if any of your toffs came playing it off on to me he'd get a bit more than he quite wanted."
The girl's tone and manner carried conviction even to her hearer.
"Is it possible that he is known to you under some different name? Tell me, what friends have you?"
The singularity of the request did not seem to occur to Lizzie. The reply came as promptly as if the question had been a commonplace.
"Friends? Do you mean fellows? The only fellow that ever was a friend to me, and he's only a sort of a one, is Joe Mason, what's carpenter up at the theatre; he's no earl. Ask yourself the question-do I look the sort of girl an earl would take up with?"
Miss Graham felt that she did not-had felt so all along; not although the earl was possessed of such peculiar tastes as was the one in question.
"You might look different on the stage-one can make oneself look like anything there."
"I might and I mightn't. As far as I know no one ever took me for a beauty even on the stage, not even Joe Mason."
The girl's eyes twinkled with laughter, as if the bare possibility of such a thing struck her as comical. Her visitor returned to the fireplace. She made a little troubled movement with her hands.
"I wish you would be frank with me. You must know something of him, even if you don't know him, else how came your name and address to be in his pocket, and why should he claim your acquaintance?"
"It beats me fair, it does. I never gave it him, that's certain. There's a muddle somewhere."
"Is there anyone else of your name at the theatre?"
"If there is I never heard of it, and I've been there now getting on for two years.