"The gentleman sitting beside her is the author of the play," said Mrs. Manley, screwing up her eyes to peer across the width of the pit. "She is some vizard Miss that ought to be sitting in the slips, I'll be sworn."
"Nay, I'll take my oath she is a modest woman."
"But to sit alone in a box with a bachelor, and a notorious rake into the bargain—Lavendale's boon companion!"
"O, you are talking of the days before the deluge. Mr. Durnford has turned sober, and sits in Parliament. He is one of the doughtiest knights in Sir Robert's phalanx—a rising man, madam; and as for Lavendale, he too has turned sober. One hardly ever meets him at White's, or any of the other chocolate-houses. I am told he is dying."
"When he is dead you may tell me of his sobriety and I will believe you," retorted the bluestocking, "but till then forgive me if I doubt your veracity or your information. It was only last June I saw Lavendale at Vauxhall intriguing with Lady Judith Topsparkle. I almost knocked against them in one of the dark walks, and a woman who saunters in a dark walk at midnight, hanging on the arm of a former lover—"
"Is in a fair way to forget her duty to a latter husband," asserted the buck, regaling himself with a pinch of smoked rappee out of the handle of his clouded cane.
Three or four of Durnford's acquaintance came to the box in the course of the evening, and were duly presented to his bride, whom they had all recognised as the beauty and heiress of Arlington Street, a star that had flashed upon the town for a brief space, to disappear into rustic obscurity.
"I feared, Mrs. Bosworth, that this poor little smoky town of ours was never again to be illumined by your beauty," said Mr. Philter, who was one of the first to press an entrance into the box.
"Mrs. Bosworth belongs only to history," said Herrick; "I have the honour to present you to Mrs. Durnford."
"What, Herrick! you astound me. Can fortune have been so lavish, and can destiny have been so blind, when your obedient servant Thomas Philter still sighs and worships at the shrine of beauty a miserable bachelor?"