Part 3 (2/2)

Not dead!

DRUMMLE.

Certainly, in the worst sense. He's married Mabel Hervey.

MISQUITH.

What!

DRUMMLE.

It's true--this morning. The poor mother showed me his letter--a dozen curt words, and some of those ill-spelt.

MISQUITH.

[_Walking up to the fireplace._] I'm very sorry.

JAYNE.

Pardon my ignorance--who _was_ Mabel Hervey?

DRUMMLE.

You don't----? Oh, of course not. Miss Hervey--Lady Orreyed, as she now is--was a lady who would have been, perhaps has been, described in the reports of the Police or the Divorce Court as an actress. Had she belonged to a lower stratum of our advanced civilisation she would, in the event of judicial inquiry, have defined her calling with equal justification as that of a dressmaker. To do her justice, she is a type of a cla.s.s which is immortal. Physically, by the strange caprice of creation, curiously beautiful; mentally, she lacks even the strength of deliberate viciousness. Paint her portrait, it would symbolise a creature perfectly patrician; lance a vein of her superbly-modelled arm, you would get the poorest _vin ordinaire_! Her affections, emotions, impulses, her very existence--a burlesque! Flaxen, five-and-twenty, and feebly frolicsome; anybody's, in less gentle society I should say everybody's, property! That, doctor, was Miss Hervey who is the new Lady Orreyed. Dost thou like the picture?

MISQUITH.

Very good, Cayley! Bravo!

AUBREY.

[_Laying his hand on_ DRUMMLE'S _shoulder._] You'd scarcely believe it, Jayne, but none of us really know anything about this lady, our gay young friend here, I suspect, least of all.

DRUMMLE.

Aubrey, I applaud your chivalry.

AUBREY.

And perhaps you'll let me finish a couple of letters which Frank and Jayne have given me leave to write. [_Returning to the writing-table._]

Ring for what you want, like a good fellow!

[AUBREY _resumes his writing._

MISQUITH.

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