s."

She courtesied to the floor.

Feminine vengeance! He had come between her and her love. All very
clever, Mrs. Actress; but was it wise?

"I am revenged," thought Mrs. Woffington, with a little feminine smirk.

"I will be revenged," vowed Pomander, clinching his teeth.

CHAPTER VII.

COMPARE a November day with a May day. They are not more unlike than a
beautiful woman in company with a man she is indifferent to or averse,
and the same woman with the man of her heart by her side.

At sight of Mr. Vane, all her coldness and _nonchalance_ gave way to a
gentle complacency; and when she spoke to him, her voice, so clear and
cutting in the late _assaut d'armes,_ sank of its own accord into the
most tender, delicious tone imaginable.

Mr. Vane and she made love. He pleased her, and she desired to please
him. My reader knows her wit, her _finesse,_ her fluency; but he cannot
conceive how god-like was her way of making love. I can put a few of the
corpses of her words upon paper, but where are the heavenly tones--now
calm and convincing, now soft and melancholy, now thrilling with
tenderness, now glowing with the fiery eloquence of passion? She told
him that she knew the map of his face; that for some days past he had
been subject to an influence adverse to her. She begged him, calmly, for
his own sake, to distrust false friends, and judge her by his own heart,
eyes, and judgment. He promised her he would.

"And I do trust you, in spite of them all," said he; "for your face is
the shrine of sincerity and candor. I alone know you."

Then she prayed him to observe the heartlessness of his sex, and to say
whether she had done ill to hide the riches of her heart from the cold
and shallow, and to keep them all for one honest man, "who will be my
friend, I hope," said she, "as well as my lover."

"Ah!" said Vane, "that is my ambition."

"We actresses," said she, "make good the old proverb, 'Many lovers, but
few friends.' And oh, 'tis we who need a friend. Will you be mine?"

While he lived, he would.

In turn, he begged her to be generous, and tell him the way for him,
Ernest Vane, inferior in wit and address to many of her admirers, to win
her heart from them all.

This singular woman's answer is, I think, worth attention.

"Never act in my presence; never try to be eloquent, or clever; never
force a sentiment, or turn a phrase. Remember, I am the goddess of
tricks. Do not descend to competition with me an