He had come to the end of his resources available for negotiation with the lady when the question ceased to be one of money. He could not pretend to himself that he would have any chance of success with her were he merely to go to her with the assurance that Dick Sheridan and Betsy Linley loved each other and would be happy together if she, Mrs. Abington, were to release Dick from the promise she had obtained from him. He knew that her generosity would not be equal to such a strain as he should put upon it, were he to make such a suggestion to her. She was a woman, and he had an idea that women have a tendency to place an extravagant value upon what other women show themselves anxious to possess. The fact that Miss Linley was in love with Dick Sheridan would only cause Mrs. Abington to chuckle over the bargain she had made with Dick. It seemed clear to him that he could gain nothing beyond that chuckle by his visit to the actress. To be sure, she would take care that it was a purely artistic suggestion of something rather more than content, and it would be made worthy of the attention of the most exalted order of critics; still, it would represent to Mr. Long (he knew) something rather more humiliating than the failure of his mission, and it was his fear of this chuckle that caused him to abandon his enterprise and to shape his steps in the direction of his own house.
He opened the door of his parlour and found himself face to face with Mrs. Abington!
CHAPTER XXXV
His first thought was, curiously, of the story he had heard of the man who had left London to escape the plague and had found it waiting for him at Highbury. He bowed to the ground.
“Madam,” he said, “I have never before been so honoured. My poor rooms—— But is this visit in accordance with the well-known discretion of Mrs. Abington?”
“’Tis a great risk I run, sir,” she cried, with a delightful uplifting of two shapely arms and an expression of fear such as one assumes in order to make a child laugh,—“oh yes, a terrible risk!—but I am adventurous.”
“And your example is stimulating to the timid, madam; that is why I beg of you to be seated. Pray Heaven that that fiery young Mr. Sheridan be not in the neighbourhood. Still, for five minutes of Mrs. Abington’s wit a more timid man than myself would run the chance of a duel with Colonel Thornton himself.”
This was scarcely the style of the conversation which he hoped to have with the lady when he had been on his way to her lodgings; but one does not adopt the same style with a person to whom one is about to make an appeal, as one adopts with a person who is about to be an appellant; and he felt sure that Mrs. Abington had come to him in this character.