retreated. Sir Charles
flung a guinea on the counter, and mounting his horse rode him off
rather faster than before this accident.

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. L., lib. 3, and after that "Triplet
on Kew," she would have instantly pronounced in favor of "Eden"; but
if _we_ had read her "Milton," and Mr. Vane had read her "Triplet," she
would have as unhesitatingly preferred "Kew" to "Paradise."

She was a true daughter of Eve; the lady, who, when an angel was telling
her and her husband the truths of heaven in heaven's own music, slipped
away into the kitchen, because she preferred hearing the story at
second-hand, encumbered with digressions, and in mortal but marital
accents.

When her mother, who guarded Mabel like a dragon, told her Mr. Vane was
not rich enough, and she really must not give him so many opportunities,
Mabel cried and embraced the dragon, and said, "Oh, mother!" The
dragon, finding her ferocity