And thus the simple De Mortemar discoursed of the greatness that was in him, while the scantily furnished benches of pit and gallery attested the badness of the season. “They haven’t heard of me yet,” said the star, serene even in the hour of disappointment. “London is a large place, and a man can’t get a reputation in a week. The metropolitan papers are slow, sir--very slow--to a man who has been accustomed to see a column and a half of criticism written upon every new character performed by him; but they can’t afford to leave me unnoticed much longer; and when they do speak, they’ll speak out, depend upon it. I look upon the Oxford Road Theatre as a stepping-stone to Drury Lane, and it was with that view I took it.” Mr. de Mortemar had engaged Miss St. Albans for the heroines of those dramas and comedies in which he intended to shine, not because he believed in her talent--for in plain truth this great man believed in the existence of no talent except his own--but because she was very young and inexperienced, and he could do as he liked with her; which means, in a dramatic sense, that he could keep her with her back to the audience, in an ignominious corner of the stage, through the greater part of a scene, while he shouted and ranted at her from the centre of the boards; and that he could take her up so sharply at the end of her most telling speeches as to deprive her of that just meed of applause an approving audience might naturally have bestowed upon her, and in bestowing which they would have divided that coronal of glory Mr. de Mortemar desired to obtain for himself alone. Mr. Desmond found that portion of the boxes playfully entitled the dress-circle in occupation of two young women in scarlet Garibaldi jackets and black velvet head-dresses; one fat elderly lady, in a cap which offered to the eye of the observer a small museum of natural and artistic curiosities in the way of shells, feathers, beads, butterflies, and berries; three warm-looking young men, sprawling and lounging and giggling and whispering amongst themselves in a corner box; and a scanty sprinkling of that class of spectators who come with free admissions, and rarely come prepared for the removal of their bonnets, which removal being rigorously exacted, leaves them wild and haggard of aspect and soured in temper. Amongst this audience the editor of the _Areopagus_ meekly took his place, and prepared to await the rising of the curtain, while a subdued crunching of apples and sucking of oranges, mingled with a chorus of sibilant whisperings, went on round and about him.