Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/184

 questionable character about a "woman with a past." The picture is complete with the lady's father—the Earl of Elton—bending forward in the box and eagerly gloating over every detail of the performance. There is assuredly no exaggeration in this portraiture. Such scenes can be witnessed every night during the season. Nor does Marie Corelli go beyond the unpleasing truth in asserting that novels on similar themes are popular amongst women and are a sure preparation for the toleration and applause by women of such plays.

The Earl of Elton is hard up, as his daughter knows, and she has been trained to manœuvre for a rich husband. The idea of a marriage for love is out of the question; she is too wary to brave "the hundred gloomy consequences of the res angusta domi," as old Thackeray puts it. She is not the sort of girl who marries where her heart is, "with no other trust but in heaven, health, and labor,"—to quote the same mighty moralist.

As Prince Rimânez has explained to Tempest, Lady Sibyl is "for sale" in the matrimonial market, and Tempest determines to buy her; or, in other words, decides that he wants to marry her and that his millions will enable him to achieve that object. Poor Lady Sibyl! A victim of circumstances, it is impossible not to pity her! Cold, callous, heartless,