There was a dead silence!
"I believe that gentleman to be the Devil!" said a thoughtful bystander.
The crowd (it was a century ago) assented _nem. con._
Sir Charles, arrived in Bloomsbury Square, found that the whole party was
assembled. He therefore ordered his servant to parade before the door,
and, if he saw Mrs. Vane 's carriage enter the Square, to let him know,
if possible, before she should reach the house. On entering he learned
that Mr. Vane and his guests were in the garden (a very fine one), and
joined them there.
Mrs. Vane demands another chapter, in which I will tell the reader who
she was, and what excuse her husband had for his liaison with Margaret
Woffington.
CHAPTER X.
MABEL CHESTER was the beauty and toast of South Shropshire. She had
refused the hand of half the country squires in a circle of some dozen
miles, till at last Mr. Vane became her suitor. Besides a handsome face
and person, Mr. Vane had accomplishments his rivals did not possess. He
read poetry to her on mossy banks an hour before sunset, and awakened
sensibilities which her other suitors shocked, and they them.
The lovely Mabel had a taste for beautiful things, without any excess of
that severe quality called judgment.
I will explain. If you or I, reader, had read to her in the afternoon,
amid the smell of roses and eglantine, the chirp of the mavis, the hum of
bees, the twinkling of butterflies, and the tinkle of distant sheep,
something that combined all these sights, and sounds, and smells--say
Milton's musical picture of Eden, P.
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