"What has that to do with it?" the other repeated, placidly. "As an independent writer, Quirk is quite beneath contempt--quite. There is no backbone in his writing at all, and he knows his own weakness; and he thinks he can conceal it by the use of furious adjectives. He is always in a frantic rush and flurry, that produces no impression on anybody. A whirlwind of feathers, that's about it. He goes out into the highway and brandishes a double-handed sword--in order to sweep off the head of a buttercup. And I suppose he expects the public to believe that his wild language, all about nothing, means strength; just as he hopes that they will take his noisy horse-laugh for humor. That's Octavius Quirk as a writer--a nobody, a nothing, a wisp of straw in convulsions; but as a puffer--ah, there you have him!--as a puffer, magnificent, glorious, a Greek hero, invincible, invulnerable. My good man, it's Octavius Quirk you should go to! Get him to call on his pack of beagles to give tongue; and then, my goodness, you'll hear a cry--for a while at least. Is there anything at all in the book?" "I don't know," said Harry Thornhill, who had changed quickly, and was now regaling himself with a little of Miss Burgoyne's lemonade, with which the prima-donna was so kind as to keep him supplied. "Well, now, I shall be on the stage some time; what do you say to looking over Lady Adela's novel?" "All right." There was a tapping at the door; it was the call-boy. But Lionel Moore did not immediately answer the summons. "Look here, Maurice; if you should find anything in the book--anything you could say a word in favor of--I wish you'd come round to the Garden Club with me, after the performance, and have a bit of supper. Octavius Quirk is almost sure to be there." "What, Quirk? I thought the Garden was given over to dukes and comic actors?" "There's a sprinkling of everybody in it," the young baritone said; "and Quirk likes it because it is an all-night club--he never seems to go to bed at all. Will you do that?" "Oh, yes," Maurice Mangan said; and forthwith, as his friend left the dressing-room, he plunged into Lady Adela's novel. The last act of "The Squire's Daughter" is longer than its predecessors; so that Mangan had plenty of time to acquire some general knowledge of the character and contents of these three volumes. Indeed, he had more than time for all the brief scrutiny he deemed necessary; when Lionel Moore reappeared, to get finally quit of his theatrical trappings for the night, his friend was standing at the fireplace, looking at a sketch in brown chalk of Miss Burgoyne, which that amiable young lady had herself presented to Harry Thornhill. "Well, what's the verdict?" Mangan turned round, rather bewildered; and then he recollected that he had been glancing at the novel.