A servant in livery brought him a note from Mr.Vane, dated Covent Garden.

Triplet's eyes sparkled, he bustled, wormed himself into a less rusty coat, and started off to the Theater Royal, Covent Garden.
In those days, the artists of the pen and the brush ferreted patrons, instead of aiming to be indispensable to the public, the only patron worth a single gesture of the quill.
Mr.Vane had conversed with Triplet, that is, let Triplet talk to him in a coffee-house, and Triplet, the most sanguine of unfortunate men, had already built a series of expectations upon that interview, when this note arrived.

Leaving him on his road from Lambeth to Covent Garden, we must introduce more important personages.
Mr.Vane was a wealthy gentleman from Shropshire, whom business had called to London four months ago, and now pleasure detained.

Business still occupied the letters he sent now and then to his native county; but it had ceased to occupy the writer.

He was a man of learning and taste, as times went; and his love of the Arts had taken him some time before our tale to the theaters, then the resort of all who pretended to taste; and it was thus he had become fascinated by Mrs.Woffington, a lady of great beauty, and a comedian high in favor with the town.
The first night he saw her was an epoch in the history of this gentleman's mind.