“I am certain I shall read it with very great interest,” said he; and that was strictly true, for this Lady Adela Cunyngham completely puzzled him; she seemed so extraordinary a combination of a clever woman of the world and an awful fool.

And Lionel?  Well, he had got introduced to Miss Gabrielle Grey, whom he found to be a very quiet, shy, pensive sort of creature, not posing as a distinguished person at all.  He dared not talk to her of her books, for he did not even know the names of them; but he let her understand that he knew she was an authoress, and it seemed to please her to know that her fame had penetrated into the mysterious regions behind the footlights.  She began to question him, in a timid sort of way, about his experiences—­whether stage-fright was difficult to get over—­whether he thought that the immediate and enthusiastic approbation of the public was a beneficial stimulant—­whether the continuous excitement of the emotional nature tended to render it callous, or, on the other hand, more sensitive and sympathetic—­and so forth.  Was she dimly looking forward to the conquest of a new domain, where the young ladies of the rectory and the vicarage might be induced fearfully to follow her?  But Lionel did not linger long in that drawing-room.  He got Maurice Mangan away as soon as he could; they slipped out unobserved—­especially as there were plenty of new-comers now arriving.  When they had passed down through the back garden to the gate, the one lit a cigarette, and the other a pipe; and together they wended their way towards Kensington Road and Piccadilly.

“Why,” said Mangan, “I shall have quite a favorable report to carry down to Winstead.  I did not see you treated with any of that unwholesome adulation I have heard so much of!”

“I am almost a stranger in the house now,” Lionel said, briefly.

“Why?”

“Oh, various circumstances, of late.”

“They did not even ask you to sing,” his friend said, in accents of some surprise.

“They dared not.  Didn’t you see that most of the people were strangers?  How could Lady Adela be sure that she was not wounding somebody’s susceptibilities by having operatic music on a Sunday evening?  She knew nothing at all about half those people; they were merely names to her, that she had collected round her in order that she might count herself in among the arts.”

“That ill-conditioned brute Quirk seemed to me to be dominating the whole thing,” said Mangan, rather testily.  “It’s an awful price to pay for a few puffs.  I wonder a woman like that can bear him to come near her, but she pets the baboon as if he were a King Charles spaniel.  Linnie, my boy, you’re no longer first favorite.  I can see that; self-interest has proved too strong; the flattering little review, the complimentary little notice, has ousted you.  It isn’t you who are privileged to meet my Lady Morgan in the street—­

   ’And then to gammon her, in the Examiner,
    With a paragraph short and sweet.’