“Jackson--Captain Jackson!” cried the actress. “Why, Dr. Goldsmith, this is a very little fiend that you ask me to help you to destroy. Surely, sir, he can be crushed without my assistance. One does not ask for a battering-ram to overturn a house of cards--one does not requisition a park of artillery to demolish a sparrow.” “Nay, but if a blunderbuss be not handy, one should avail oneself of the power of a piece of ordnance,” said Goldsmith. “The truth is, madam, that in this matter I represent only the blunder of the blunderbuss.” “If you drift into wit, sir, we shall never get on. I know 'tis hard for you to avoid it; but time is flying. What has this Captain Jackson been doing that he must be sacrificed? You must be straight with me.” “I'm afraid it has actually come to that. Well, Mrs. Abington, in brief, there is a lady in the question.” “Oh! you need scarce dwell on so inevitable an incident as that; I was waiting for the lady.” “She is the most charming of her sex, madam.” “I never knew one that wasn't. Don't waste time over anything that may be taken for granted.” “Unhappily she was all unacquainted with the wickedness of men.” “I wonder in what part of the world she lived--certainly not in London.” “Staying with a relation in the country this fellow Jackson appeared upon the scene----” “Ah! the most ancient story that the world knows: Innocence, the garden, the serpent. Alas! sir, there is no return to the Garden of Innocence, even though the serpent be slaughtered.” “Pardon me, Mrs. Abington”--Goldsmith spoke slowly and gravely--“pardon me. This real story is not so commonplace as that of my Olivia. Destiny has more resources than the most imaginative composer of fiction.” In as direct a fashion as possible he told the actress the pitiful story of how Mary Horneck was imposed upon by the glamour of the man who let it be understood that he was a hero, only incapacitated by a wound from taking any further part in the campaign against the rebels in America; and how he refused to return her the letters which she had written to him, but had threatened to print them in such a way as would give them the appearance of having been written by a guilty woman. “The lady is prostrated with grief,” he said, concluding his story. “The very contemplation of the possibility of her letters being printed is killing her, and I am convinced that she would not survive the shame of knowing that the scoundrel had carried out his infamous threat.”