ng is, you justly rebuked me, only you should not tell an
actress she has no heart--that is always understood. Well, Sir Charles
Pomander said she married a third in two months!"

"And did she?"

"No, it was in six weeks; that man never tells the truth; and since then
she has married a fourth."

"I am glad of it!"

"So am I, since you awakened my conscience."

Delicious flattery! and of all flattery the sweetest, when a sweet
creature does flattery, not merely utters it.

After this, Vane made no more struggles; he surrendered himself to the
charming seduction, and as his advances were respectful, but ardent and
incessant, he found himself at the end of a fortnight Mrs. Woffington's
professed lover.

They wrote letters to each other every day. On Sunday they went to
church together in the morning, and spent the afternoon in the suburbs
wherever grass was and dust was not.

In the next fortnight, poor Vane thought he had pretty well fathomed
this extraordinary woman's character. Plumb the Atlantic with an
eighty-fathom line, sir!

"She is religious," said he, "she loves a church much better than a
playhouse, and she never laughs nor goes to sleep in church as I do. And
she is breaking me of swearing--by degrees. She says that no fashion can
justify what is profane, and that it must be vulgar as well as wicked.
And she is frankness and simplicity itself."

Another thing that charmed him was her disinterestedness. She ordered
him to buy her a present every day, but it was never to cost above a
shilling. If an article could be found that cost exactly tenpence (a
favorite sum of hers), she was particularly pleased, and these shilling
presents were received with a flush of pleasure and brightening eyes.
But when one day he appeared with a diamond necklace, it was taken very
coldly, he was not even thanked for it, and he was made to feel, once
for all, that the tenpenny ones were the best investments toward her
favor.

Then he found out that she was very prudent and rather stingy; of
Spartan simplicity in her diet, and a scorner of dress off the stage.
To redeem this she was charitable, and her charity and her economy
sometimes had a sore fight, during which she was peevish, poor little
soul.

One day she made him a request.

"I can't bear you should think me worse than I am, and I don't want you
to think me better than I am."

Vane trembled.

"But don't speak to others about me; promise, and I will promis