A husband with a wife in Shropshire is so like a bachelor." _Mabel._ "Sir!" _Pomander._ "And our excellent Ernest is such a favorite!" _Mabel._ "No wonder, sir!" _Pomander._ "Few can so pass from the larva state of country squire to the butterfly nature of beau." _Mabel._ "Yes" (sadly), "I find him changed." _Pomander._ "Changed! Transformed.

He is now the prop of the 'Cocoa-Tree,' the star of Ranelagh, the Lauzun of the green-room." _Mabel._ "The green-room! Where is that?
You mean kindly, sir; but you make me unhappy." _Pomander._ "The green-room, my dear madam, is the bower where houris put off their wings, and goddesses become dowdies; where Lady Macbeth weeps over her lap-dog, dead from repletion; and Belvidera soothes her broken heart with a dozen of oysters.

In a word, it is the place where actors and actresses become men and women, and act their own parts with skill, instead of a poet's clumsily." _Mabel._ "Actors! actresses! Does Mr.Vane frequent such--" _Pomander._ "He has earned in six months a reputation many a fine gentleman would give his ears for.

Not a scandalous journal his initials have not figured in; not an actress of reputation gossip has not given him for a conquest." "How dare you say this to me ?" cried Mrs.Vane, with a sudden flash of indignation, and then the tears streamed over her lovely cheeks; and even a Pomander might have forborne to torture her so; but Sir Charles had no mercy.
"You would be sure to learn it," said he; "and with malicious additions.
It is better to hear the truth from a friend." "A friend?
He is no friend to a house who calumniates the husband to the wife.

Is it the part of a friend to distort dear Ernest's kindliness and gayety into ill morals; to pervert his love of poetry and plays into an unworthy attachment to actors and--oh!" and the tears would come.