Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/67

Rh the last of Mrs. Rooth. I saw her afterwards in London, and I met her a year or two ago in Venice. She appears to be a great wanderer. She had other old pots, of other colours—red, yellow, black, or blue—she could produce them of any complexion you liked. I don't know whether she carried them about with her or whether she had little secret stores in the principal cities of Europe. To-day, at any rate, they seem all gone. On the other hand she has her daughter, who has grown up and who is a precious vase of another kind—less fragile, I hope, than the rest. May she not be overturned and smashed!"

Peter Sherringham and Biddy Dormer listened with attention to this history, and the girl testified to the interest with which she had followed it by saying, when Mr. Nash had ceased speaking: "A Jewish stockbroker, a dealer in curiosities: what an odd person to marry—for a person who was well born! I dare say he was a German."

"His name must have been simply Roth, and the poor lady, to smarten it up, has put in another o," Sherringham ingeniously suggested.

"You are both very clever," said Gabriel Nash, "and Rudolf Roth, as I happen to know, was indeed the designation of Maud Vavasour's papa. But, as far as the question of derogation goes, one might as well drown as starve, for what connection is not a misalliance when one happens to have the cumbersome, the unaccommodating honour of being a Neville-Nugent of Castle Nugent? Such was the high lineage of Maud's mamma. I seem to have heard it mentioned that Rudolf Roth was very versatile and, like most of his species,