"Oh! it is a melodrama you're speaking of? I was not aware, I am sure, or I should"—
"My dear sir, make no apologies. I hate the fuss people make about a man because he happens to be a successful author. I assure you, the plain entertainment you have given is better than all the fêtes my friends Devonshire and Lansdowne gave me, when I published the Blasted Nun."
So my murderer had sunk into a writer of plays.
Sibylla looked at him with still more intense admiration, when she heard him speak of the honours his works had procured him, and he entered at once into a minute description of the festivities of Chatsworth and Bowood, that would have done honour to the Morning Post.
After the ladies had gone to the drawing-room, I took the opportunity of having a quiet conversation with Frank, while his friend was astonishing the minds of the rest of the party with an account of his having refused the Guelphic Order which the Queen had pressed upon him on the twenty-fourth night of his Blood-stained Milkmaid.
"Who, in Heaven's name, and what is your friend, Mr Percy Marvale?"
"Oh, a very good fellow!" replied Frank. "I have known him at the Club for a long time."
"He seems a rum one."
"A very useful ally, I can assure you. I study him as the beau ideal of vanity and impudence."
"But your studies seem somewhat useless, if you have no higher object?"