country
cut, while his complexion breathes of hay-fields and hedge sides, is
introduced, gazes round, and steps up to her. Mistress Betty cries out,
"La!"--an exclamation not a whit vulgar in her day--"the Justice!" And
she holds forth both her hands. "How are dear Mistress Prissy and
Mistress Fiddy? Have you come up to town for any time, sir? I wish
prosperity to your business."

He has not held such kind, unaffected, friendly hands since they parted;
he has only once before held a hand that could have led a Jaffier to
confess his conspiracy--that could have clung to a crushed man, and
striven to raise him when calamity, like a whirlwind, cast him down.

The squire is sensibly moved, and Mistress Betty vindicates her
womanliness by jumping at a conclusion and settling in her own mind that
his brain is addled with this great London--its politicians, its
mohawks, its beggars in Axe Lane, its rich tradesmen in Cranbourne
Alley, its people of quality, fashion, and taste in their villas at
Twickenham.

He asks if she is on in Belvidera, and when he hears that it is another
actress's benefit, and that she has only consented to appear in a
secondary part in a comedy of Sir John's, who is now a great
castle-builder, he does not trouble himself to enter a box; at which she
is half flattered, half perplexed. He waits, hot and excited, until her
short service is over. He will not call upon her at her lodgings,
because, in his delicacy, he has so keen a remembrance of her exposed
position.

In the corner behind the curtain, bounded by the refreshment table, and
filled with the prompter's monotonous drawl,--far, far from his barley
ripe for the mowing, his boxwood peacocks, his greyhaired Hal and his
buxom milkmaids; far from old madam, the pedantic, formal vicar, young
madam, brisk, hot, and genial, and his old charmers Prissy and
Fiddy,--the squire told his tale of true love. The man threw down the
costs and besought Mistress Betty Lumley, Lady Betty, to renounce the
stage, forsake fame, quit studies, rehearsals, opening-nights, and
concluding curtsies amidst the cheers of thousands, to go down with him
to rural Larks' Hall, to grow younger, happier, and better every day,
and die like Lady Loudon in her hundredth year, universally
regretted,--above all, to fill up the gulf which had yawned in the
market-place of his existence since that night at Bath.

It was a primitive proceeding. Lady Betty was amazed at the man's
assu