“You forget, sir,” replied Mrs. Woffington, without moving, “that I am an actress--a plaything for the impertinence of puppies and the treachery of hypocrites. Fool! to think there was an honest man in the world, and that he had shone on me!” With these words she turned, and Triplet was shocked to see the change in her face. She was pale, and her black, lowering brows were gloomy and terrible. She walked like a tigress to and fro, and Triplet dared not speak to her. Indeed she seemed but half conscious of his presence. He went for nobody with her. How little we know the people we eat and go to church and flirt with! Triplet had imagined this creature an incarnation of gayety, a sportive being, the daughter of smiles, the bride of mirth; needed but a look at her now to see that her heart was a volcano, her bosom a boiling gulf of fiery lava. She walked like some wild creature; she flung her hands up to heaven with a passionate despair, before which the feeble spirit of her companion shrank and cowered; and, with quivering lips and blazing eyes, she burst into a torrent of passionate bitterness. “But who is Margaret Woffington,” she cried, “that she should pretend to honest love, or feel insulted by the proffer of a stolen regard? And what have we to do with homes, or hearts, or firesides? Have we not the playhouse, its paste diamonds, its paste feelings, and the loud applause of fops and sots--hearts?--beneath loads of tinsel and paint? Nonsense! The love that can go with souls to heaven--such love for us? Nonsense! These men applaud us, cajole us, swear to us, flatter us; and yet, forsooth, we would have them respect us too.” “My dear benefactress,” said Triplet, “they are not worthy of you.” “I thought this man was not all dross; from the first I never felt his passion an insult. Oh, Triplet! I could have loved this man--really loved him! and I longed so to be good. Oh, God! oh, God!” “Thank Heaven, you don't love him!” cried Triplet, hastily. “Thank Heaven for that!” “Love him? Love a man who comes to me with a silly second-hand affection from his insipid baby-face, and offers me half, or two-thirds, or a third of his worthless heart? I hate him! and her! and all the world!” “That is what I call a very proper feeling,” said poor Triplet, with a weak attempt to soothe her. “Then break with him at once, and all will be well.” “Break with him? Are you mad? No! Since he plays with the tools of my trade I shall fool him worse than he has me. I will feed his passion full, tempt him, torture him, play with him, as the angler plays a fish upon his hook. And, when his very life depends on me, then by degrees he shall see me cool, and cool, and freeze into bitter aversion. Then he shall rue the hour he fought with the Devil against my soul, and played false with a brain and heart like mine!” “But his poor wife? You will have pity on her?”