Lavinia hastened to Grub Street. She ran up the dirty narrow ricketty stairs, her heart palpitating with excitement, and she knocked at the garret door. It was opened immediately, Lancelot Vane stood in the doorway, his fine eyes beaming. He looked very handsome, Lavinia thought, and she blushed under his ardent gaze.
He had washed, he had shaved, he had put on his best suit and his wig concealed the cut on his forehead. He was altogether a different Lancelot from the bedraggled, woe-begone, haggard young man whom she had found in the last stage of misery two hours ago. He had moreover, enlisted the help of the old woman whom Lavinia had met on the stairs at her first visit and the place was swept and tidied. The room as well as its occupant was now quite presentable.
"I've brought you something to eat," stammered Lavinia quite shyly to her own surprise. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Not if you'll do me the honour to share it with me."
"Oh, but it will give you so much trouble. And I'm not hungry. I bought it all for you."
Lavinia was busy emptying the contents of a rush basket which the good-natured landlord of the "Green Dragon" had given her.
"Have you a plate and a knife and fork? You can't eat with your fingers, you know."
"I've two plates and two knives and forks, but the knives are not pairs. I apologise humbly for my poverty stricken household."
"That doesn't matter. I'm not going to touch a morsel."
"Neither am I then. And it isn't my hospitality, remember, but yours. Why are you such a good Samaritan?"