‘WHAT on earth is the meaning of all this?’ was the first question that Reginald Talbot put to his friend, when they found themselves alone together.

‘Of all what?’ returned William Henry indifferently. ‘Here are pipes, by the way; will you smoke a little tobacco?’

‘There it is again,’ cried Talbot; ‘I say once more, what is the meaning of it? The idea of your respectable father permitting us to smoke under his roof. Why, it was only, as it were, under protest that he was wont to permit you to breathe. Then, as for me, he used to think me something worse than one of the wicked; an anomalous emanation from Grub Street; a sort of savage with cash in his pocket: whereas his tone to me now is as the honey of Hybla. What magic has wrought this change in the old curmudgeon?’

‘Well, perhaps of late he has got to understand me better, and consequently my friends, suggested William Henry.

‘Oh, that can’t be it,’ replied Talbot contemptuously; ‘I should say if he knew as much about you as I did he would behave worse to you than ever. I don’t mean anything offensive to you, my dear fellow,’ added the speaker, for his companion’s face had grown very troubled; ‘on the contrary, I compliment you. It’s just those qualities I admire most in you which would least recommend you to his good graces. On the other hand, if you have a fault in my eyes, it is an excess of caution. Come, be frank with me, what is the tune which has set this rhinoceros a dancing?’

‘I have had the good fortune to find an old manuscript which has put my father in high good humour.’

‘And the young lady, your cousin, is she, too, enamoured of old manuscripts?’

‘Well, not that I am aware of,’ laughed William Henry.

‘Then I congratulate you,’ was the quick rejoinder; ‘it is now obvious to me that she is enamoured of you. That her affections were bespoken in some direction from the first was plain from the manner in which she received my advances.’

‘Your advances?’

‘Yes; you have heard of the power of the human eye over the brute creation. Well, that is nothing to the effects of this,’ he tapped his spy-glass, ‘upon the sensibilities of angelic woman. I have never known it fail, except when their minds are preoccupied with another object. I am writing an epic, to be entitled “The Spy-glass,” the views of which, though founded on personal experience, will be quite novel. And that reminds me, how often have we not read our poems to one another? Why have you never come to see me since I have been at the “Blue Boar?”’

‘My dear fellow, as you heard my father say—— ‘ began William Henry persuasively.

‘Tut, tut, I mean your real reason,’ put in the other scornfully. ‘We used to meet often enough when the rhinoceros did not dance, when he was very far from dancing. Yet now—— ‘

‘The fact is, my dear fellow,’ interrupted William Henry earnestly, ‘there is a reason.’

‘I have reached that point already without a guide,’ observed the other drily.

‘The truth is—— ‘ pursued William Henry.

Mr. Reginald Talbot took the pipe from his mouth and laughed aloud. Certainly no diplomatic explanation could have been conducted under greater difficulties. ‘Some people yearn for fame, my dear Erin,’ he said; ‘to others it is very undesirable to be well known, even by a single individual.’

‘If you imagine I wish to deceive you, Talbot, you are quite wrong,’ said William Henry firmly, ‘but it is true that I cannot be so frank with you as I could wish. I have a secret which is not my own, or you may be sure that you should share it. Listen.’ Then he told him the whole story of his acquaintance with the Templar and its singular result. Talbot listened to him with great attention.

‘It is very curious,’ he remarked when the narrative was finished, ‘and certainly a great stroke of luck. But it is like a tale from the “Arabian Nights.” Nay, I don’t mean on the score of veracity,’ for William Henry had flushed crimson, ‘but from its parenthetic nature. It is a story within a story; for if you can stretch your memory so far, you began with the intention of telling me why you never came to see your old friend at the “Blue Boar?”’

‘It was because I had no time, Talbot. I have to do my work at the office, and also to attend upon my new acquaintance at the Temple.’

‘You must be occupied indeed; not a moment in which to say, “How-d’ye-do? Good-morrow!”’

‘There were also my father’s injunctions. I thought such a fleeting visit as you speak of would be worse than nothing, and would cause you more annoyance than being neglected; but now my father and you are friends I will certainly find time to renew the ancient days.’

‘Come, that is better. Now shall I fill up what is wanting in your explanation and make all clear?’

‘If you please,’ said William Henry indifferently, ‘though I am not aware that there is anything more.’

‘Yes, there is your cousin Margaret,’ said Talbot, with a cunning air; ‘you would have braved the anger of the rhinoceros and followed your own inclinations—which I flatter myself would have led you to come and see me—had his favour been no more important to you than of yore. But he holds in his hand another hand, of which he has the disposal, and therefore it behoves you to be on your best behaviour.’

‘You have guessed it,’ exclaimed William Henry with admiration. ‘If I thought you could have sympathised with me, as I see you do, I should have saved you the trouble of guessing.’

‘Sympathise with you? When was son of the Muses indifferent to the love wound of his friend? Have we not always sympathised with one another? Does any one except yourself admire your poetry as much as I do? Can I anywhere find a friend more capable of appreciating the higher flights of mine than you? I have done a good deal, by-the-bye, in that way since I saw you last, Erin; not to mention six cantos of “The Spy-glass,” I have written one-and-twenty songs; some of them may be useful to you if your inspiration has flagged of late, for they are all to my mistress—whose name, like yours, is fortunately in three syllables—a madrigal or two, and a number of miscellaneous pieces, chiefly satirical. To-morrow—you said to-morrow, I think—we will devote to recitation.’

William Henry’s countenance fell. He had heard Mr. Reginald Talbot’s recitations before. They were not extempore, but they had one fatal attribute in common with extemporaneous effusions—there was no knowing where they would end. If he had been invited to recite his own poetry, that would have been a different thing.

‘Nothing would be more agreeable to me, my dear fellow, but how am I to excuse my absence from chambers?’

‘Then I’ll come to your chambers instead of your coming to me; I shall thus have the opportunity of seeing how your muse has progressed; we will compare notes together. To be sure, it is not as if you had your room to yourself; there’s that disagreeable fellow-clerk of yours, a most unappreciative and flippant person.’

‘Yes, he would spoil everything,’ put in William Henry eagerly. ‘It is better we should be alone together, even for a less time, at the “Blue Boar.”’

‘Very good; then give me as long as you can to-morrow. I want your advice, for the fact is, the business on which I am come up to town is about the publication of my poems. The publisher and I cannot agree about terms, which seems strange, since what we both want is money down. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind my selecting a few of your very best—you and I could rig out a twin volume together, like Beaumont and Fletcher.’

‘Perhaps,’ observed William Henry dubiously.

He had private and pressing reasons for conciliating Mr. Reginald Talbot, but to such a monstrous proposition as had just been made to him he felt he could never consent. It would be like yoking his Pegasus to a dray horse. As regarded other matters, it was true that Talbot and he were old friends—or rather it would be more correct to say that they had for years of boyhood been thrown into one another’s company; the bond of school-friendship is, however, soon weakened under the influence of other conditions, as hothouse flowers fade and fail in the open air; and moreover, when angered, Talbot, who piqued himself on his knowledge of human nature, had a habit of saying what he thought of his antagonist, which was not the less intolerable if it happened to be correct. Their tastes, it was true, were similar, but involved some rivalry, and each perhaps was secretly conscious that the other did not admire his verses so much as he pretended to do. With the Irish Channel between them, they would doubtless have continued to get on capitally together, but, as intimates, the path of friendship had pitfalls. It must be added that Mr. Reginald Talbot’s arrival in town had taken place at a most inconvenient season, and was, in a word, unwelcome to his former crony. That this was not perceived by Talbot was not so much owing to the other’s tact as to his own conceit, which was stupendous; but fortunately it was not seen. Perhaps our young friend did not quite believe in the Irish gentleman’s sympathy with him in respect to Margaret, and misdoubted his ‘Spy-glass;’ perhaps he thought him, if not too wise, too cunning by half. At all events he greatly regretted that his brother bard had just now come to London, and especially about the remunerative production of his poems, which he had reason to believe would be a protracted operation.

The next afternoon, when he paid his promised visit to the ‘Blue Boar,’ a circumstance occurred which caused him increased annoyance.

‘I say, my astute young friend,’ were Talbot’s first words, delivered in that half morose, half bantering way which was habitual to him when ready primed for a quarrel, ‘where have you been to these last three hours?’

‘To the Temple. Did I not tell you that I generally went there in the afternoon? As to the exact locality, you must perceive the impropriety of my mentioning it even to you.’

‘Still you might speak the truth about other matters. Why did you not tell me that old Bingley had dismissed his second clerk?’

‘What possible interest could the circumstance have for you?’

‘Only that you allowed me to conclude that he was still there, in order that I should not come to New Inn.’

‘Very good; then you know the reason.’

Mr. Reginald Talbot grew very red, and his stout frame grew visibly stouter. William Henry, however, though more slightly built, was not his inferior (as he had more than once had the opportunity of discovering) either in courage or in the art of self-defence.

‘After behaving in so false a manner to me, sir,’ said Talbot, pointing to a very considerable heap of MSS. written in parallel lines, ‘I shall not read you my poems.’

‘Thank you; that is returning good for evil,’ said William Henry coolly. ‘Read them to yourself and not aloud, or you will set the cats a caterwauling,’ and with that he clapped his hat on and marched out of his friend’s apartments.

It was not one of those quarrels described as the renewal of love; it was a deadly feud. A woman, even if she is not as fair as Venus, may forgive an imputation on her good looks, but a poet, conscious of an inferiority to Shakespeare, does not forgive a slight inflicted on his muse.