?"

"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