the other day that the Duke of Clarence, who may come to call
himself King of England, married Mrs. Jordan, who is herself only a
play-actress. And whom think you that this one is?"

She stood under the picture with her arms folded across her great
body, and her big black eyes looking from one to the other of us.

"Why, where are your eyes?" she cried at last. "_I_ was Miss Polly
Hinton of the Haymarket Theatre. And perhaps you never heard the
name before?"

We were compelled to confess that we never had. And the very name
of play-actress had filled us both with a kind of vague horror, like
the country-bred folk that we were. To us they were a class apart,
to be hinted at rather than named, with the wrath of the Almighty
hanging over them like a thundercloud. Indeed, His judgments seemed
to be in visible operation before us when we looked upon what this
woman was, and what she had been.

"Well," said she, laughing like one who is hurt, "you have no cause
to say anything, for I read on your face what you have been taught
to think of me. So this is the upbringing that you have had, Jim--
to think evil of that which you do not understand! I wish you had
been in the theatre that very night with Prince Florizel and four
Dukes in the boxes, and all the wits and macaronis of London rising
at me in the pit. If Lord Avon had not given me a cast in his
carriage, I had never got my flowers back to my lodgings in York
Street, Westminster. And now two little country lads are sitting in
judgment upon me!"