ed of Mr. Spectator's standard of virtue--"Miss Liddy can dance a
jig, raise a pasty, write a good hand, keep an account, give a
reasonable answer, and do as she is bid;" but then, it only made him
yawn. The man was sinking down into an active-bodied, half-learned,
half-facetious bachelor. He was mentally cropping dry and solid food
contentedly, and, at the same time, he was a bit of a humourist. He
loved his little Prissy and Fiddy, as dear god-daughters, whom he had
spoilt as children, and whom he was determined to present with portions
when he presided at their wedding dinners; but he had no mind to take
any of their fellows, for better for worse, as his companion, till death
did them part.

Then Lady Betty stepped upon the stage at Bath, and before a multitude
of frivolous and simple, or gross and depraved spectators, incapable
of comprehending her, she played to the manly, modestly intellectual
squire.

Master Rowland woke up, looked his fill, as open-mouthed as the rest,
and while he did so, his system received a shock. Lady Betty was
revenged to an extent she had not foreseen.

The noble woman went with her whole soul into the sorrows of the
dark-eyed, brown-faced sister whom Titian might have painted, and made
them accord with her fair English love of justice, her blue-eyed
devotion to her husband, her Saxon fearlessness and faith in the hour of
danger: only she did look strange and foreign when, in place of lying
prostrate in submission and rising in chaste, meek patience to rear her
orphan son, she writhed, like a Constance in agony, and died more
speedily from her despair than Jaffier by the dagger which on the
scaffold freed Pierre. The assembly rose in whole rows, and sobbed and
swooned. Mrs. Prissy and Mrs. Fiddy cried in delicious abandonment;
Master Rowland sat motionless.

"I declare I had forgotten the Justice," reflects Lady Betty, resting
behind the scenes. "I do believe I am that poor Belvidera for the last
half-hour. I meant to bring the man to tears. His blooming face was as
white as a sheet;--poor, dear, good man, I hope he's none the worse of
it."

Master Rowland knows full well that she is Mistress Betty Lumley the
great London actress, not Belvidera the Venetian senator's daughter; but
he will never again turn from the chill of his stone-arched hall, where
his fingers have grown benumbed riveting a piece of armour or copying an
epitaph or an epigram, or linger under his mighty oak-tree,