How little we know the people we eat and go to church and flirt with! Triplet had imagined this creature an incarnation of gayety, a sportive being, the daughter of smiles, the bride of mirth; needed but a look at her now to see that her heart was a volcano, her bosom a boiling gulf of fiery lava.

She walked like some wild creature; she flung her hands up to heaven with a passionate despair, before which the feeble spirit of her companion shrank and cowered; and, with quivering lips and blazing eyes, she burst into a torrent of passionate bitterness.
"But who is Margaret Woffington," she cried, "that she should pretend to honest love, or feel insulted by the proffer of a stolen regard?
And what have we to do with homes, or hearts, or firesides?
Have we not the playhouse, its paste diamonds, its paste feelings, and the loud applause of fops and sots--hearts ?--beneath loads of tinsel and paint?
Nonsense! The love that can go with souls to heaven--such love for us?
Nonsense! These men applaud us, cajole us, swear to us, flatter us; and yet, forsooth, we would have them respect us too." "My dear benefactress," said Triplet, "they are not worthy of you." "I thought this man was not all dross; from the first I never felt his passion an insult.

Oh, Triplet! I could have loved this man--really loved him! and I longed so to be good.

Oh, God! oh, God!" "Thank Heaven, you don't love him!" cried Triplet, hastily.

"Thank Heaven for that!" "Love him?
Love a man who comes to me with a silly second-hand affection from his insipid baby-face, and offers me half, or two-thirds, or a third of his worthless heart?
I hate him! and her! and all the world!" "That is what I call a very proper feeling," said poor Triplet, with a weak attempt to soothe her.