said,

"You don't often go down to see the old people, Linn?"

"I'm so frightfully busy!"

"Has Miss Francie ever been up to the theatre--to see 'The Squire's
Daughter,' I mean?"--this question he seemed to put rather diffidently.

"No. I've asked her often enough; but she always laughs and puts it off.
She seems to be as busy down there as I am up here."

"What does she think of the great name and fame you have made for
yourself?"

"How should I know?"

Then there was silence for a second or two.

"I wish you'd run down to see them some Sunday, Linn; I'd go down with
you."

"Why not go down by yourself?--they'd be tremendously glad to see you."

"I should be more welcome if I took you with me. You know your cousin
likes you to pay a little attention to the old people. Come! Say Sunday
week."

"My dear fellow, Sunday is my busiest day. Sunday night is the only
night I have out of the seven. And I fancy that it is for that very
Sunday evening that Lord Rockminster has engaged the Lansdowne Gallery;
he gives a little dinner-party, and his sisters have a big concert
afterwards--we've all got to sing the chorus of the new marching-song
Lady Sybil has composed for the army."

"Who is Lady Sybil?"

"The sister of the authoress whose novel you were reading."

"My gracious! is there another genius in the family?"

"There's a third," said Lionel, with a bit of a smile. "What would you
say if Lady Rosamund Bourne were to paint a portrait of me as Harry
Thornhill for the Royal Academy?"

"I should say the betting was fifty to one against its getting in."

"Ah, you're unjust, Maurice; you don't know them. I dare say you judged
that novel by some high literary standard that it doesn't pretend to
reach. I am sure of this, that if it's half as clever as Lady Adela
Cunyngham herself, it will do very well."

"It will do very well for the kind of people who will read it," said the
other, indifferently.

This was a free-and-easy place; when they had finished supper, Lionel
Moore lit a cigarette, and his friend a briar-root pipe, without moving
from the table; and Mangan's prayer was still that his companion should
fix Sunday week for a visit to the little Surrey village where they had
been boys together, and where Lionel's father and mother (to say nothing
of a certain Miss Francie Wright, whose name cropped up more than once
in Mangan's talk) were still living. But during this entreaty Lionel's
attention happened