“ ’Pon my soul, William! ’Tis the Duchess of Queensberry and her son⁠—March, you know. I assure you there is no one more amiable in town. When I last visited her⁠—”

“Charles knows well-nigh everyone here,” remarked Mrs. Fleming ingenuously, and wondered why her cousin laughed.

When the curtain rose on the first act, Lovelace was nowhere to be seen, and Lavinia tried to interest herself in the play. But it is difficult to be interested in anything when one’s whole mind is occupied with something else far more overwhelming. She was not the only one of the party that Garrick failed to amuse. Richard sat wretchedly in the shadow of the box, thinking how, in a short while, he would never again conduct his wife to the theatre and never again sit at her side watching her every change of expression.