fat man in a frowsy wig. He had a malicious glint in his squinting eyes
and was evidently of some importance. When he spoke the others listened
with respect.

This pompous personage was Edmund Curll, bookseller, whose coarse and
infamous publications once brought him within the law. Curll, we are
told, possessed himself of a command over all authors whatever; he
caused them to write what he pleased; they could not call their very
names their own. Curll was the deadly enemy of Pope and his friends, and
his unlimited scurrility drew from the poet of Twickenham a retaliation
every whit as coarse and as biting as anything the bookseller's warped
mind ever conceived.

Had Lavinia been told this was the notorious Curll, the name would have
conveyed nothing. The quarrels of poets and publishers were to her a
sealed book. All that she knew was that she disliked the man at first
sight, while his vile speech made her ears tingle with shame. Despite
the danger possibly awaiting her in the gloom of Paternoster Row she
would have fled had not the sight of one of the group at the table
rooted her to the spot.

This was Lancelot Vane whom her maiden fancy had elevated into a god
endowed with all the virtues and laden with misfortunes which had so
drawn him towards her. Vane--alas that it should have to be written--had
taken much wine--far too much!

Lavinia knew the signs. Often in the old days in St. Giles had she seen
them--the eyes unnaturally bright, the face unnaturally flushed, the
laugh unnaturally empty. And she had pictured Vane so sad, so depressed!
The sight of him thus came upon her as a shock.