‘Yes, I saw it dreadfully cut up in the _Saturday Review_, so I thought it must be nice, and sent to the publishers for a copy,’ answered Madge. ‘I’ve had it down on my Mudie’s list ever so long, without effect. It’s a wonderful book. Viola and I were up till three o’clock this morning reading it together. Neither of us could wait. From the moment we began with that picture of a London twilight, and the two girls and the young lawyer sitting in a balcony talking, we were riveted. It is all so easy, so lifelike, so full of vigour and freshness and colour.’ ‘The author would be very much flattered if he could hear you,’ said Maurice. ‘The author—oh, I’m afraid he must be rather a disagreeable person. He seems to have such a bad opinion of women.’ ‘Oh, Madge, his heroine is a noble creature!’ cried Viola. ‘Yes, but the woman his hero loves best is worthless.’ ‘Well, I should like to know the author,’ said Viola. ‘I don’t think Churchill would get on very well with him,’ said Madge. And that to her mind made an end of the question. The only people she sought were people after Churchill’s own heart. This poet had a wildness in his ideas which the Squire of Penwyn would hardly approve. * * * * * Among Mr. Clissold’s literary acquaintance was a clever young dramatic author, whose work was just beginning to be popular. One afternoon at the club—a rather Bohemian institution for men of letters, in one of the streets of the Strand—this gentleman—Mr. Flittergilt—invited Maurice to assist at the first performance of his last comedietta at a small and popular theatre near at hand. They dined together, and dropped in at the theatre just as the curtain was falling on a half-hour farce played while the house was filling. The piece of the evening came next. ‘No Cards,’ an original comedy in three acts; which announcement was quite enough to convince Maurice that the motive was adapted from Scribe, and the comic underplot conveyed from a Palais Royal farce. ‘There’s a new girl in my piece,’ said Mr. Flittergilt, on the tiptoe of expectation, ‘such a pretty girl, and by no means a bad actress.’ ‘Where does she come from?’ ‘Goodness knows. It’s her first appearance in London.’ ‘Humph, comes to the theatre in her brougham, I suppose, and has her dresses made by Worth.’ ‘Not the least in the world. She wore a shabby grey thing, which I believe you call alpaca, at rehearsal this morning, and she ran into the theatre, dripping like a naiad, in a waterproof—if you can imagine a naiad in a waterproof—having failed to get a seat in a twopenny omnibus.’ ‘That is the prologue,’ said Maurice, with a slight shoulder-shrug. ‘Perhaps Madge was right, and that he really had a bad opinion of women.’ He turned to the programme listlessly presently, and read the old names he knew so well, for this house was a favourite lounge of his. ‘Is the piece really original, Jack?’ he inquired of his friend.