"
"What lady?" said Vane, scarcely believing his senses.
"That you were so unkind to me about."
"I, unkind to you? what a brute I must be!"
"My meaning is, you justly rebuked me, only you should not tell an
actress she has no heart--that is always understood. Well, Sir Charles
Pomander said she married a third in two months!"
"And did she?"
"No, it was in six weeks; that man never tells the truth; and since then
she has married a fourth."
"I am glad of it!"
"So am I, since you awakened my conscience."
Delicious flattery! and of all flattery the sweetest, when a sweet
creature does flattery, not merely utters it.
After this, Vane made no more struggles; he surrendered himself to the
charming seduction, and as his advances were respectful, but ardent and
incessant, he found himself at the end of a fortnight Mrs. Woffington's
professed lover.
They wrote letters to each other every day. On Sunday they went to church
together in the morning, and spent the afternoon in the suburbs wherever
grass was and dust was not.
In the next fortnight, poor Vane thought he had pretty well fathomed this
extraordinary woman's character. Plumb the Atlantic with an eighty-fathom
line, sir!
"She is religious," said he, "she loves a church much better than a
playhouse, and she never laughs nor goes to sleep in church as I do. And
she is breaking me of swearing--by degrees.
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