He wondered if he was more clumsy of apprehension than other men, as he had come away from her without learning her secret. He was shrewd enough to know that the majority of men to whom he might give a detailed account of his interview with the girl—a detailed account of his observation of her upon the appearance of Captain Jackson first at the Pantheon, then in the green room of Covent Garden—would have no trouble whatever in accounting for her behaviour upon both occasions. He could see the shrugs of the cynical, the head-shakings of those who professed to be vastly grieved.
Ah, they did not know this one girl. They were ready to lump all womankind together and to suppose that it would be impossible for one woman to be swayed by other impulses than were common to womankind generally.
But he knew this girl, and he felt that it was impossible to believe that she was otherwise than good. Nothing would force him to think anything evil regarding her.
“She is not as others,” was the phrase that was in his mind—the thought that was in his heart.
He did not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance that when a man wishes to think the best of a woman he says she is not as other women are.
He did not know enough of men and women to be aware of the fact that when a man makes up his mind that a woman is altogether different from other women, he loves that woman.
He felt greatly grieved to think that he had been unable to search out the heart of her mystery; but the more he recalled of the incidents that had occurred upon the two occasions when that man Jackson had been in the same apartment as Mary Horneck, the more convinced he became that the killing of that man would tend to a happy solution of the question which was puzzling him.
After giving this subject all his thought for the next day or two, he went to his friend Baretti, and presented him with tickets for one of the author's nights for “She Stoops to Conquer.” Baretti was a well known personage in the best literary society in London, having consolidated his reputation by the publication of his English and Italian dictionary. He had been Johnson's friend since his first exile from Italy, and it was through his influence Baretti, on the formation of the Royal Academy, had been appointed Secretary for Foreign Correspondence. To Johnson also he owed the more remunerative appointment of Italian tutor at the Thrales'. He had frequently dined with Goldsmith at his chambers.
Baretti expressed himself grateful for the tickets, and complimented the author of the play upon his success.
“If one may measure the success of a play by the amount of envy it creates in the breasts of others, yours is a huge triumph,” said the Italian.