ing 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.

"Oh, _that_!" he said, regarding the three volumes with no very
favorable air, "Mighty poor stuff, I should say; just about as weak as
they make it. But harmless. Some of the conversation--between the
women--is natural; trivial, but natural. The plain truth is, my dear
Linn, it is a very foolish, stupid book, which should never have been
printed at all; but I suppose your fashionable friend could afford to
pay for having it printed."

"But, look here, Maurice," Lionel said, in considerable surprise, "I
don't see how it can be so very stupid, when Lady Adela herself is one
of the brightest, cleverest, shrewdest, most intelligent women you could
meet with anywhere--quite unusually so."

"That may be; but she is not the first clever woman who has made the
mistake of imagining that because she is socially popular she must
therefore be able to write a book."

"And what am I to say to Octavius Quirk?"

"What are you to say to the log-rollers? Don't say anything. Get Lady
Adela to ask one or two of them to dinner. You'll fetch Quirk that way
e