After this contretemps, the villany of the widow and her ally takes a different turn.  In a love affair there are generally two parties; and Miss Prudence has got to be persuaded that she is in love.  This it is not difficult to accomplish, she being no more overburdened with penetration than the gentleman they are so kind as to say she is in love with.  So far all goes on well:  for she is soon convinced that she is enamoured to the last extremity.

Livingstone having a sort of glimmering that the danger so long averted at length impends over him—­that he is falling into the trap of love, with every chance of the fall continuing down to the bottomless pit of matrimony, determines to avert the catastrophe by flight.  The pair of villains, however, set up a cry of “Stop thief,” and he is brought back. Sir Harry appeals to his feelings.  Good gracious! is he so base, so dishonourable, so heartless, to rob an innocent, unsuspecting, and accomplished girl of her heart, and then wickedly desert her!  Oh, no!  In short, having already persuaded the poor man that he is in love, Sir Harry convinces him that he would also be a deceiver; and Livingstone would have returned like a lamb to the slaughter but for a new incident.

He has an uncle who is engaged in a law-suit with some of Mrs. Courtnay’s family.  To bring this litigation to an amicable end it has been proposed that Livingstone should marry the widow’s sister.  Here is a discovery!  So, the deep widow has been unwittingly plotting against her own sister!  Things must be altered; and so they are, in no time, for she persuades the easy hero that Nugent is in love with Prudence himself; but, finding she adores her new lover, has magnanimously given up his claims in his favour.  This has the desired effect, for Livingstone will have no such noble sacrifice made on his account.  He seeks Sir Harry; who, discovering the double design of the profound widow, talks as immensely magnanimous as they do in classic dramas.  In short, both play at Romans till the end of the piece; the hero and heroine being at last fully persuaded that they have each really fallen in “Love Extempore!”

This idea of persuading two persons into the bonds of love—­of having all the courting done at second-hand, is admirably worked out. Livingstone is a well-drawn character; so well, so naturally painted, that he hardly deserves to be the hero of a farce.  Although exceedingly soft, he is a well-bred fool—­though somewhat fat (for the actor is Mr. David Rees); he is not altogether inelegant.  The gentleman who does the theatrical metaphysics in the Morning Herald has described him as a capital specimen of “physical obesity and moral teunity,"[3]—­which we quote to save ourselves trouble, for the force of description can no further go. Prudence is also inimitable—­a march-of-intellect young lady without brains, who knows the names of the five large rivers in America, and how many bones there are in the gills of a turbot.  In Miss P. Horton’s hands her mechanical acquirements were done ample justice to.  The cold unmeaning love scene was rendered mainly by her acting