‘Yes, but the woman his hero loves best is worthless.’
‘Well, I should like to know the author,’ said Viola.
‘I don’t think Churchill would get on very well with him,’ said Madge. And that to her mind made an end of the question.
The only people she sought were people after Churchill’s own heart. This poet had a wildness in his ideas which the Squire of Penwyn would hardly approve.
Among Mr. Clissold’s literary acquaintance was a clever young dramatic author, whose work was just beginning to be popular. One afternoon at the club—a rather Bohemian institution for men of letters, in one of the streets of the Strand—this gentleman—Mr. Flittergilt—invited Maurice to assist at the first performance of his last comedietta at a small and popular theatre near at hand.
They dined together, and dropped in at the theatre just as the curtain was falling on a half-hour farce played while the house was filling. The piece of the evening came next. ‘No Cards,’ an original comedy in three acts; which announcement was quite enough to convince Maurice that the motive was adapted from Scribe, and the comic underplot conveyed from a Palais Royal farce.
‘There’s a new girl in my piece,’ said Mr. Flittergilt, on the tiptoe of expectation, ‘such a pretty girl, and by no means a bad actress.’
‘Where does she come from?’
‘Goodness knows. It’s her first appearance in London.’