So she would let matters take their course, would wait upon occurrences.  In very truth, to put herself on view with intent of catching a husband, of obtaining an establishment in life, was no more than young ladies of fashion, of virtue, of piety, did continually, under the skilled direction of the most estimable mothers.  In Madge’s case, the only difference was, on the one side, the excuse of necessity; on the other side, the encumbrance of her existing marriage.  But the latter could be removed, whereas the former would daily increase.

She must, therefore, benefit by Ned’s operations as long as they did not threaten to degrade her.  By the time they did threaten so, she would have gained some experience of her own, circumstances would have arisen which she could turn to her use.  Of actual destitution, never having felt it, she could not conceive; and therefore she did not take account of its possibility in her case.

So, having recovered from her brief panic, she went to bed and slept soundly.

The next morning Ned was in jubilant spirits.  His visit the previous night had been to a gaminghouse in Covent Garden, and fortune had showered him with benefactions.  He saw the margin of time at their disposal lengthened by several weeks.  He bade his sister put herself at her best, drank with her to their success, and went and engaged a hairdresser and a maid.  They went that night, in a hackney-coach, to the play at Drury Lane.

The open-mouthed gazing of her new maid, the deftly spoken admiration of her hairdresser, and the mirror upon her dressing-table, had prepared Madge for triumph.  Her expectations were not disappointed, but they were almost forgotten.  Her pleasure at sight of the restless, chattering crowd; her interest in the performance; her joy in seeing, in fine:  supplanted half the consciousness of being seen.  But she was, indeed, stared at from all parts of the house; people looked, and nudged one another; and the powdered bucks and beauties in the side-boxes, glancing up, forgot their own looks in examining hers.

Ned was elated beyond measure.  He praised her all the way home in the coach, and when they stood at last on the step of their lodging-house, he waited a moment before going in, and looked back toward the Strand, half-thinking that some susceptible and adventurous admirer might have followed their conveyance to the door.

The next day, Sunday, he took her to church, at St. James’s in Piccadilly, where they had difficulty in getting seats, and where several pious dowagers were scandalised at the inattention of their male company to the service.  Ned walked out alone in the afternoon, but, to his surprise, he was not accosted by any gentleman pretending to recognise him as some one else, as a means of knowing him as himself.

On Monday he made himself seen at numerous coffee-houses and taverns, but, although he came upon two or three faces that he had noted in the theatre, no one looked at him with any sign of recollection.  “Well, well,” thought he, and afterward said to Madge, “in time they will come to remember me as the lovely creature’s escort; at first their eyes will be all for the lovely creature herself.”