"I don't know," said Harry Thornhill, who had changed quickly, and was
now regaling himself with a little of Miss Burgoyne's lemonade, with
which the prima-donna was so kind as to keep him supplied. "Well, now, I
shall be on the stage some time; what do you say to looking over Lady
Adela's novel?"

"All right."

There was a tapping 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