The actress had risen, and was pointing in fine tragic style to the door.
Mrs. Lewis rose also, but slowly; her eyes fell beneath the flashing eyes of Mrs. Abington. Suddenly she raised her head, and put out a trembling hand.
“I will not believe what I have heard,” she said. “And yet—yet—you are so very beautiful.”
“That you think it impossible I should have any good in me?” laughed the actress. “Well, I do believe that I have some good in me—not much, perhaps, but enough to make me wish to do you a friendly turn in spite of your impudence. Listen to me, you little goose. Why have you allowed your husband to neglect you, and to come here asking me to sup with him at Vauxhall?”
“Ah, then, 't is true!” cried the wife. “You have gone with him—you are going with him?”
“'Tis true that I went with him, and that he left me just now believing that I would accompany him to the Gardens on Monday next. Well, what I want you to explain is how you have neglected your duty toward your husband so that he should stray into such evil ways as supping with actresses at Vauxhall.”
“What! would you make out that his neglect of his duty is my fault?”
“Great heavens, child, whose fault is it, if it is not yours? That is what I say, you do n't deserve to have a toy if you let some strange child snatch it away from you.”
“I protest, Mrs. Abington, that I scarce take your meaning. I have nothing to reproach myself with. I have ever been the best of wives. I have never gone gadding about to balls and routs as some wives do; I have remained at home with my baby.”
“Exactly, and so your poor husband has been forced to ask certain actresses to bear him company at those innocent pleasures, which he, in common with most gentlemen of distinction, enjoy. Ah, 't is you domestic wives that will have to answer for your husbands' backslidings.”