“What, my Lord, waiting for Polly? Has she not past this way?”
There was a sneer under the lightness. The woman could recall when he had waited there for her and not in vain.
“I have not seen her, Miss Lucy!” says he, calling her familiarly by her stage name. “Nor did I so desire. I waited here to tell the seductive Lucy Lockit that I have not seen nor could imagine a part better played than that of the forlorn mistress of Macheath.”
Even such as my Lord Baltimore may fail in tact sometimes. A sullen fire lit in the lady’s fine eyes.
“Why, my Lord, I have had such practice in the past of the deserted one—’twas yourself taught me you know, that ’tis no wonder I should succeed. There are Macheaths at Court as well as in Newgate though their booty is hearts not purses.”
“Amoret—Amoret!” says he shaking his finger at her and laughing— “When the summer is past ’tis past and the flowers drop. But you’ll own you were happy while it lasted, and is that nothing to be grateful for? I made you happy—you owned it a thousand times. Would you now repay me with anger?”
“Not you—not you!” she cried with a sudden fierce tenderness— “ ’Tis that partial little devil I loathe, that wins all hearts, that has stole yours from me.”
“My dear, it left you long since. Don’t the swallows fly away with the summer? My heart has wings. I never pretended otherwise to my Amoret.”
“You did. You swore—but why waste breath? You have no heart. You never had. But let me tell you this, my Lord—this smooth-faced little devil is my abhorrence. She hath pushed me down on the stage. Do you think I didn’t see that all the world looked at her tonight and I was but her foil? She has made a fool of Rich, of Gay, of Walker—of all the persons who could advance or help me. If I could ruin her this minute and drag her in the dirt with a wish, I would do it. Some day I will do it, though she be a duchess’s favourite, and a nobleman’s——”
She spit out the hateful word and made to thrust by him. He caught her hand as she past and stared in her face.