to strip him of his
travelling costume of cocked hat, frogged coat, white leather breeches,
and shining black boots in order to make way for the more brilliant
attire of the last act.

"Now that I am here, what are your highness's commands?" Mangan asked.

"There's a book there--written by a friend of mine," Lionel said, as he
was helping his dresser to get off the glittering top-boots. "She wants
me to do what I can for her with the press. What do I know about that?
Still, she is a very particular friend--and you must advise me."

Mangan rose and went to the mantelpiece and took down Volume I.

"Lady Arthur Castletown--" said he.

"But that is not her real name," the other interposed. "Her real name is
Lady Adela Cunyngham--of course you know who she is."

"I have been permitted to hear the echo of her name from those rare
altitudes in which you dwell now," the other said, lazily. "So she is
one of your fashionable acquaintances; and she wants to secure the puff
preliminary, and a number of favorable reviews, I suppose; and then you
send for me. But what can I do for you except ask one or two of the
gallery men to mention the book in their London Correspondent's letter?"

"But that's the very thing, my dear fellow!" Lionel Moore cried, as he
was getting on his white silk stockings. "The very thing! She wants
attention drawn to the book. She doesn't want to be passed over. She
wants to have the name of the book and the name of the author brought
before the public--"

"Her real name?"

"Yes, certainly, if that is advisable."

"Oh, well, there's not much trouble about that. You can always minister
to a mind diseased by a morbid craving for notoriety if a paragraph in
a country newspaper will suffice. So this is part of what your
fashionable friends expect from you, Linn, in return for their
patronage?"

"It's nothing of the kind; she would do as much for me, if she knew how,
or if there were any occasion."

"Oh, well, it is no great thing," said Mangan, who was really a very
good-natured sort of person, despite his supercilious talk. "In fact,
you might do her ladyship a more substantial service than that."

"How?"

"I thought you knew Quirk--Octavius Quirk?"

"But you have always spoken so disparagingly of him!" the other
exclaimed.

"What has that to do with it?" Mangan asked; and then he continued, in
his indolent fashion: "Why, I thought you knew all about Quirk. Quirk
belongs to a band of litera