After he had done this he trembled; he had courted a
decision, when, perhaps, his safety lay in patience and time. She made
her _entree;_ he turned cold as she glided into sight from the prompter's
side; he raised his eyes slowly and fearfully from her feet to her head;
her head was bare, wreathed only by its own rich glossy honors. "Fool!"
thought he, "to think she would hang frivolities upon that glorious head
for me." Yet his disappointment told him he had really hoped it; he would
not have sat out the play but for a leaden incapacity of motion that
seized him.
The curtain drew up for the fifth act, and!--could he believe his
eyes?--Mrs. Woffington stood upon the stage with his wreath upon her
graceful head. She took away his breath. She spoke the epilogue, and, as
the curtain fell, she lifted her eyes, he thought, to his box, and made
him a distinct, queen-like courtesy; his heart fluttered to his mouth,
and he walked home on wings and tiptoe. In short--
Mrs. Woffington, as an actress, justified a portion of this enthusiasm;
she was one of the truest artists of her day; a fine lady in her hands
was a lady, with the genteel affectation of a gentlewoman, not a harlot's
affectation, which is simply and without exaggeration what the stage
commonly gives us for a fine lady; an old woman in her hands was a
thorough woman, thoroughly old, not a cackling young person of epicene
gender.
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