Miss Verinder asked, “Do they really base their objections to--Forgive me, dear. What is his name again? Mr. Beckett. Yes, of course. Well, do they only base their objection on the fact that he is an actor?”
A crimson wave of indignation flowed upward from Mildred’s neck to her forehead, while she explained how they had the effrontery to say their real objection was--not so much that he was an actor, as that he was a bad actor.
“Who are they to judge?” said Mildred hotly; and for a space she held forth concerning the young man’s brilliant talent.
Miss Verinder asking how matters stood at the moment, Mildred told her that the outrageous Mr. Parker had simply forbidden them to meet. “But we _do_ meet of course.” And with a few words she conjured up a picture of their clandestine meetings late at night in Ennismore Gardens itself--he driving as fast as taxi-cab would bring him from the theatre, she slipping out of the house to wait for him, and the two of them pacing slowly through that columned entrance by the mews and along the passage by the churchyard, in the warm darkness beneath the trees; peered at curiously by soft-footed policemen; encountering, as it seemed, all the servant-maids of the neighbourhood similarly engaged with _their_ sweethearts. “Isn’t it degrading, Emmeline, to be forced to do such a thing?”
And again she spoke of love and its invincible claims. She knew, she said, that her destiny was all in her own hands. If she lost Alwyn, she would have herself to thank, and it would be no use to put the blame on anybody else. It was this thought that sometimes made her feel desperate--and Alwyn too. Her parents could not of course really come between them. But then there is the money question. What they _can_ do is just to cut her off without a penny; and really, seeing them behave like such pigs, one could believe them capable of doing it. Well, that is not fair. That is tommy rot. Suppose, after all, darling Alwyn should prove, not a bad actor, but hardly quite the tremendous one that she hopes he is; then, in that case, if they had a proper settlement--“the usual thing,” with parents as well-off as hers--she could take him off the stage. There were heaps of things she could do with him. Or if--as is far more probable--he makes a colossal success, money will be useful to set him up in management. You must look ahead; although, when you are madly in love, it is difficult to do so.