"Do you remember where Hamlet, in the graveyard, holds the jester's skull in his hands? 'Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?'" "'To what base uses we may return, Horatio!'" added Frank. "Yes," she replied; "'Imperial Cæsar, dead and turn'd to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.'" And she recited the verses which close the scene. Frank listened with a sort of religious tenderness. "You love Shakespeare?" he asked. "I adore him!" Attracted by this new bond of common admiration, they spoke of that sovereign master of souls, and exchanged the emotions which he had aroused in their hearts. Hand in hand they wandered, and lost themselves in that vast, murmurous forest filled with alarms and enchantments, with refreshing springs and hideous pools, with jocund imps and menacing monsters, where the fairy flowers of sentiment bloom and fade in the umbrage of gigantic thoughts, amidst which passes, like a stormy wind, a tremor of the vague Beyond, the breath of the invisible, unknown world. As they conversed thus, seated upon an old sofa between the skeleton and the portrait of Lady Mowbray, Reynolds entered. For two hours they had been together. The painter looked at them, and smiled with indulgent penetration. "We have been talking of Shakespeare," Frank explained, slightly ill at ease. Sir Joshua did not believe one word of it. Either he knew not, or he had forgotten that old age alone requires to _speak_ of love. In youth, love impregnates every word, insinuates itself into the very gestures, plunges into the glance, exhales at every pore, saturates the air we breathe. Then of what import are words? "And there is Reuben waiting all this while!" thought Esther suddenly. That thought alone re-established all her roguish coquetry in the space of one second. CHAPTER VIII. MR. FISHER'S SUBSTITUTE. "Mr. Fisher!" Thus invoked by his name, the hairdresser who had the honor of attending the leading artists of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, stopped suddenly upon the dim staircase which led to the dressing-rooms. "Who is it?" he inquired, striving to distinguish the person who had accosted him. "What do you want? I am in a hurry. Miss Woodville waits. What! _You_, my lord?" he added as his interlocutor advanced into the doubtful radiance shed by the argand-lamp upon the upper landing. A trifle arrogant at first, with a mingling of poorly dissimulated nervousness (for courage was not Mr. Fisher's besetting virtue), the tone of the worthy hairdresser had become obsequious in the extreme. Lord Mowbray was one of his best clients. "Mr. Fisher," said the young nobleman, "you are going straight home and to bed." "I, my lord! Your lordship must surely be jesting. They are waiting for me up-stairs, and I must--" Lord Mowbray barred his further progress.