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?" "The Surrey, when the melodrama is finished." "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 _fetes_ 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?" "Oh, but I have, though--a very serious object--the only object, in fact, I care for in the world!" And here the young man sighed. "Well, if your object," I said, "has any connexion with my old friend Smith, I think he is in a fair way of securing you a confederate in Miss Sibylla." "She may perhaps be useful; but Marvale will find out whether she will be so or not, before he lets her go to-night." "Well, if it's any thing where other assistance is needed, you may depend on me." "You're very good; but I fear you have neither the vanity nor the impudence that are so invaluable in my friend Percy Marvale." "Is that his real name?" "I am sure I don't know. It is what he is known by in the Club. He dramatizes all the bloodthirsty horrors at the Surrey--pushes his way every where--puffs and praises himself wherever he goes--is very good-looking, and makes love like a French hero--and, in short, is at this moment indispensable to me." I made no further enquiries, for Frank filled his gl
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