Here diplomacy was not policy, for, as my sagacious reader has perhaps
divined, Sir Charles Pomander _was after her himself._
CHAPTER III.
YES, Sir Charles was _after_ Mrs. Woffington. I use that phrase because
it is a fine generic one, suitable to different kinds of love-making.
Mr. Vane's sentiments were an inexplicable compound; but respect,
enthusiasm, and deep admiration were the uppermost.
The good Sir Charles was no enigma. He had a vacancy in his
establishment--a very high situation, too, for those who like that sort
of thing--the head of his table, his left hand when he drove in the Park,
etc. To this he proposed to promote Mrs. Woffington. She was handsome and
witty, and he liked her. But that was not what caused him to pursue her;
slow, sagacious, inevitable as a beagle.
She was celebrated, and would confer great _eclat_ on him. The scandal of
possessing her was a burning temptation. Women admire celebrity in a man;
but men adore it in a woman.
"The world," says Philip, "is a famous man; What will not women love so
taught?"
I will try to answer this question.
The women will more readily forgive disgusting physical deformity for
Fame's sake than we. They would embrace with more rapture a famous
orang-outang than we an illustrious chimpanzee; but when it comes to
moral deformity the tables are turned.
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