Leonard Merrick

“ I daresay the girl's right enough—for the right man; but she's a long way from right for you. You don't really suppose she can care about you. You're a good lad, but the last fellow in the world to please an actress. If you hadn't told her you were my nephew, she'd have laughed in your face when you proposed to her."
"I am prepared," said the curate resignedly, "to suffer humiliation if need be." ”

“ It was practically my first visit to a theatre, and a most memorable experience. Perhaps you know the play?"
"Girl holds up a cross in the limelight and the lions are afraid to eat her?"
"No, sir, there are no lions. There are lions in the pictorial advertisements of the play, but they are not actually visible on the stage. It isn't too much to say that I was 'overwhelmed.' I was ashamed of the unreasoning prejudice I had always entertained against theatrical performances."
"You haven't come to ask me to endow a theatre, I hope?" put in the millionaire genially. ”

“ How much do you want?"
"Frankly, I am nervous," faltered his nephew.
"Better try the port," counselled Pybus. "No? All right; stick to your colours, even if they're a blue ribbon."
"You have always been so generous—more than generous. Your subscriptions, and—and your proposals as regards myself, though I couldn't accept them, were——"
"Natural enough! You'll have to have the lot one day—I've nobody else to leave it to, and I'm not the man to marry again." He laughed. "It'll be a funny position, eh—an East End curate blooming into a millionaire? You're a queer fish, Cuthbert! ”

“ The spiritual note that Cuthbert had expected of her—to go on being the heroine of A Crown of Thorns after the curtain was down—wouldn't catch on here at all, she decided; there was no hit to be made on those lines. Admiration, a wide-eyed homage of the financier's cleverness? Probably all the women he met looked at him like that—it had been played out long ago. The smartest thing would be to treat the middle-aged magnate as if he were an amusing young man! ”

“ I know what actresses are like."
"But you don't know her. If you would talk to her once, she would convert you; you would own you were wrong. My life's happiness is at stake. Before you decide, let me bring her to see you. Surely it is no more than fair?" ”

“ Pybus picked up the evening papers. "It's no good going on with it; that's all I've got to say."
He opened the Pall Mall.
"Good-night, sir," quavered the curate, extending a hopeless hand.
"Good-night, boy," said the financier cordially. "Whenever you want anything in reason let me know."
Cuthbert took a bus to Victoria, and arrived at the Shakespeare, Clapham, in ample time. It was still embarrassing to him to loiter at a stage-door; but a man is justified in meeting his fiancée anywhere. ”

“ Pybus!"
"Keep your temper—it's a reflection on him, not on you. I'll explain. Cuthbert is my heir faute de mieux—which may be translated as 'Because I haven't a son, much as I should like one'—and though I've never pretended he was the apple of my eye, I should regret to see him come to grief. If you were the flabby, phonographic sort of young woman to echo his sentiments and make him happy, I'd say, 'Take him with my sympathy—he's yours!' You're a hundred per cent. too charming for the marriage to be a success. ”