She sat at her tambour frame stitching the flowers of a silken garden, and while she stuck her needle in and out she discoursed of ‘The Beggar’s Opera.’ ’Twas truly in her mind night and day, owing to the malicious pleasure she took in the hope of wounding Sir Robert Walpole with the innuendoes her Grace and Mr. Gay had prepared.
“Gay tells me all goes as well as even he could wish,” says she. “ ’Twas Heaven’s own blessing sent us a Polly he can approve, for like all the tribe of authors he’s so thin-skinned that unless all’s perfection he expects the sky to fall and crush his hopes. He describes her the prettiest wench he ever set eyes on—a black beauty but with eyes like violets.”
“Beauty is not all in a player,” says the Duke, caressing her silky lap-dog on his knees. “ ’Tis manner—a something seductive, I know not how to word it, but a something that makes the whole world desire to embrace the lady.”
The Duchess gave one of her big hearty laughs.
“And doubtless they do so—more or less!” says she. His Grace still stroked the dog’s silken ears.
“Why, not in this case, Madam, it appears. ’Tis a case of the chaste Diana, and——”
“What? On the stage? I won’t believe it.”
“But you must believe it. For one whole fortnight—fourteen days, no less, this damsel hath stood fire and hath not lowered her flag, no, not by an inch. ’Tis reported that her Macheath is so in love with her that he can scarce play the character of the gay libertine that shines on all the ladies alike, and is in public, as in his private character of Mr. Walker, so lovesick that he can’t say ‘How happy could I be with either,’ without conveying by every sign and token that he has no eye at all for the unhappy Lucy Lockit, and that his whole soul is Polly’s. Mr. Rich hath scolded, argued, reasoned, and all in vain.”
“And Polly?”
“Polly will have none of him, she turns up the most exquisite nose in Christendom, barring your Grace’s, and when she must sidle up to him does it with a Don’t-touch-me! air that she must certainly amend or incur Mr. Gay’s severest reproof.”