Vane before, hastened to place on Mr. Vane's right
hand the chair Pomander had provided, a plate and napkin were there in a
twinkling, and the wife modestly, but as a matter of course, courtesied
low, with an air of welcome to all her guests, and then glided into the
seat her servants obsequiously placed before her.
The whole thing did not take half a minute!
CHAPTER XI.
MR. VANE, besides being a rich, was a magnificent man; when his features
were in repose their beauty had a wise and stately character. Soaper and
Snarl had admired and bitterly envied him. At the present moment no one
of his guests envied him--they began to realize his position. And he, a
huge wheel of shame and remorse, began to turn and whir before his eyes.
He sat between two European beauties, and, pale and red by turns, shunned
the eyes of both, and looked down at his plate in a cold sweat of
humiliation, mortification and shame.
The iron passed through Mrs. Woffington's soul. So! this was a villain,
too, the greatest villain of all--a hypocrite! She turned. very faint,
but she was under an enemy's eye, and under a rival's; the thought drove
the blood back from her heart, and with a mighty effort she was
Woffington again. Hitherto her liaison with Mr. Vane had called up the
better part of her nature, and perhaps our reader has been taking her for
a good woman; but now all her dregs were stirred to the surface.
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