‘Quite true, my darling; and yet you have not mentioned the highest gift that Fortune has vouchsafed me, compared with which all her other favours are mere gilt and tinsel—your dear self.’ ‘Tut, tut; you are a born actor, sir, and should offer your services to Mr. Kemble.’ He looked at her with troubled eyes, gravely, almost sorrowfully, then folded her to his breast without a word. It was clear, she thought, that Mrs. Siddons’s refusal to play her part had disappointed him cruelly. One day two ladies called to see Mr. Erin. The antiquary, as it happened, was out: upon hearing which, they expressed a wish to see his son. William Henry, who no more went to the office in the New Inn, but transacted his father’s business for him at home (not so much that he was necessary to it as because the old gentleman preferred to keep the lad about him), was neither mounting drawings nor cataloguing prints, but exchanging pretty nothings with Margaret, when the servant came with her message. ‘Ladies to see _you_, Willie,’ said she, laughing. ‘I am almost inclined to be jealous; I wonder what can be their business?’ ‘They want to see the MSS., I suppose,’ he said indifferently. ‘Well, at all events I can’t get at them; your uncle has taken the key of the chest with him.’ Margaret shook her head. ‘They have come about the play,’ she said; ‘they are actresses.’ This was a conclusion to which William Henry had already arrived, though he had not thought it worth while to mention it. His heart, indeed, had leapt up within him at the news in question, not that he was the least inclined to play the gay Lothario, but that everything connected with the representation of the ‘Vortigern’ immensely interested him. Hitherto he had been kept out of it; the whole affair had been carried on up to this point without his interference, as indeed was natural enough; it was not as if the ‘Vortigern’ had been _his_ play. ‘It is very unlikely,’ said William Henry diplomatically; ‘but it is possible they want Mr. Erin’s opinion about some reading, and since I know his views I had perhaps better see them.’ His tone was interrogative, but he did not wait to hear her opinion on the subject, but at once repaired to the parlour. That apartment, hallowed by so many antiquarian associations, was now tenanted by two persons of a very different stamp from those who generally visited it. ‘If critics and commentators indeed were beings like these,’ was the young rogue’s reflection, ‘“cherished folios“ would be things to be envied.’