he knows all about the
miserable mistake that has arisen, I don't know which will be greatest,
her happiness or her penitence, for having misunderstood the position.
Now let's have some coffee."

He ordered this refreshment from a passing waiter, and as he did so, a
gentleman, with hands clasped behind his back, and a suave smile on his
countenance, bowed to him with marked and peculiar courtesy as he
sauntered on his way through the room. Beau returned the salute with
equal politeness.

"That's Whipper," he explained with a smile, when the gentleman was out
of earshot. "The best and most generous of men! He's a critic--all
critics are large-minded and generous, we know,--but he happens to be
remarkably so. He did me the kindest turn I ever had in my life. When my
first book came out, he fell upon it tooth and claw, mangled it, tore it
to ribbons, metaphorically speaking,--and waved the fragments mockingly
in the eyes of the public. From that day my name was made--my writings
sold off with delightful rapidity, and words can never tell how I
blessed, and how I still bless, Whipper! He always pitches into
me--that's what's so good of him! We're awfully polite to each other, as
you observe--and what is so perfectly charming is that he's quite
unconscious how much he's helped me along! He's really a first-rate
fellow. But I haven't yet attained the summit of my ambition,"--and here
Lovelace broke off with a sparkle of fun in his clear steel-grey eyes.

"Why, what else do you want?" asked Lorimer laughing.

"I want," returned Beau solemnly, "I want to be jeered at by _Punch_! I
want _Punch_ to make mouths at me, and give me the benefit of his
inimitable squeak and gibber. No author's fame is quite secure till dear
old _Punch_ has abused him. Abuse is the thing nowadays, you know.
Heaven forbid that I should be praised by _Punch_. That would be
frightfully unfortunate!"

Here the coffee arrived, and Lovelace dispensed it to his friends,
talking gaily the while in an effort to distract Errington from his
gloomy thoughts.

"I've just been informed on respectable authority, that Walt Whitman is
the new Socrates," he said laughingly. "I felt rather stunned at the
moment but I've got over it now. Oh, this deliciously mad London! what a
gigantic Colney Hatch it is for the crazed folk of the world to air
their follies in! That any reasonable Englishmen with such names as
Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, and Shelley, to keep the glo