Curiously enough, in the next act the position of the two actresses seemed to be reversed. It was Mrs. Woffington who was nervous, whereas Miss Hoppner was thoroughly self-possessed.
"What in the world has come over you, my dear?" asked Garrick, when Peggy had made an exit so rapidly as to cause the latter half of one of her lines to be quite inaudible.
"God knows what it is!" said Peggy. "I have felt all through the act as if I were going to break down--as if I wanted to run away from an impending calamity. By heaven, sir, I feel as if the tragedy were real and not simulated!"
"Psha! You are but a woman, after all," said Garrick.
"I fear that is the truth," said she. "Good God! that woman seems to have changed places with me. She is speaking her lines as if she had been acting in London for years. She is doing what she pleases with the house."
Garrick had to leave her to go through his great scene with the Oriana of the play, and Mrs. Woffington watched, as if spell-bound, the marvellous variety of his emotional expression, as, in the character of the Prince Orsino, he confessed to Oriana that he no longer loved her, but that he had given his heart to Francesca. She saw the gleam in the eyes of the actress of the part of the jealous woman as she denounced the perfidy of her lover, and bade him leave her presence. Then came Oriana's long soliloquy, in which she swore that the Prince should never taste the happiness which he had sought at her expense.
"I have a heart for murder, murder, murder!
Eager to grapple with its struggling prey,
And strangle it, as I shall strangle her,
With these hands hungering for her shapely
The throat on which his kisses have been flung.
Give her to me, just God, give her to me,
But for the time it takes to close my hand
Thus, and if justice reign supreme above,
The traitress shall come hither to her doom."
(_Aside_) "My prayer is answered. It is Jove's decree." So the passage ran, and it was delivered by the actress with a fervour that thrilled the house.
After her aside, Oriana turned, according to the stage directions, to Francesca with a smile. In Miss Hoppner's eyes there was a light of triumph--of gratified revenge--and before it Margaret Woffington quailed. She gave a frightened glance around, as if looking for a way of escape; there was a little pause, and then upon the silence of the house there fell the half-hissed words of Oriana as she craned her head forward facing her rival: