Among the minor successes of that London season, all the world reckoned the Colorado Seer’s Psycho-physical Entertainment at the Assyrian Hall in Bond Street, and Will Deverill’s dainty operetta, “Honeysuckle,” at the Duke of Edinburgh’s Theatre in Long Acre. The Seer, indeed, had been well advertised beforehand by the Morning Post and other London dailies, which gave puffs preliminary of his marvellous performance, “as privately exhibited to a select audience at Mrs Palmer’s charming and hospitable residence in Hans Place, Chelsea.” A well-known society writer, with a lingering love of the occult and the supernatural, saw in Mr Joaquin Holmes’s abstruse gifts “a genuine case of Second Sight, and a curious modern parallel to the most famous feats of the Delphic oracle and the Indian Yogis.” The Spectator suggested in a learned article that “Mahatmas were about”; the Daily News averred that “Nothing like Mr Holmes’s extraordinary powers had been seen on earth since the Egyptian magicians impiously counterfeited the miracles of Moses and Aaron before the throne of Pharaoh.” Every one of the accounts particularly insisted on the presence at the first trial of Mr Florian Wood, the distinguished musical and dramatic critic; whose inmost thoughts the Seer had read offhand like an open book, and whose quotations from little-known and unpopular sources he had instantly assigned to their proper origin. But when Florian himself was questioned on the subject, he shook his head with an air of esoteric knowledge, put two soft white fingers to his delicate lips, and smiled mysteriously. To say the truth, Florian loved a mystery. It flattered his sense of personal importance. Nay, he would almost have joined Mr Joaquin Holmes as a confederate in his little tricks for pure love of mystification, were it not for a wholesome and restraining dread that others might find them out as he himself had done. So the Seer, thus well and cheaply advertised by anticipation, made a hit for the moment, as dozens of such quacks have done before and since, from Home and Bishop to the Little Georgia Magnet.

As for Will Deverill’s play, the first night was crowded. All London was there, in the sense that the Savage, the Garrick, and the Savile give to all London. Rue had taken tickets for stalls with reckless extravagance, and bestowed them right and left, as if on the author’s behalf, to every influential soul among her fine acquaintance. Florian whipped up a fair number of first-nighters of the literary clique, and not a few great ladies from Belgravia drawing-rooms. The audience was distinctly and decidedly favourable. But not all the packed houses that ever were can save a bad play, if bad it is, from condign damnation. The incorruptible pit and the free and independent electors of the gallery are no respecters of persons, in their critical capacity. Fortunately, however, as it happened, Will’s play was a good one. It didn’t take the audience by storm at the first hearing, but it pleased and satisfied them. One or two of the melodies had a catchy ring; one or two of the scenes were both brilliant and pathetic. The house encored all the principal tunes; and when the curtain fell on virtue triumphant, in the person of Honeysuckle, vociferous cries arose on every side for “Author! Author!”

Will sat in a stage box, throughout the whole performance, with Florian, Rue, his sister, Mrs Sartoris, and her husband, the amiable East End curate. It was a three-act piece. As far as the end of the second act, Maud Sartoris was delighted; it was a distinct success, and Rue was very well pleased. Maud thought that was good; after all, whether she “smelt of drapery” or not, it’s well for one’s brother to produce a favourable impression on a woman with a fortune of seven hundred thousand. But the third act, she felt sure, was distinctly inferior to the two that preceded it. She said as much to Rue, while Will, trembling with excitement from head to foot, slipped off to make his expected bow before the curtain.

At those words of hers, Rue turned pale. She had thought so all through, though she would hardly acknowledge it, even to herself, and she feared in her own heart she knew the reason. Could Will have written the first two acts during those happy days when his head was stuffed full of Linnet at Meran, and gone on with the third in a London lodging after he learned of her marriage to Andreas Hausberger? Rue more than half-suspected that obvious explanation?—?for Honeysuckle was Linnet?—?and the thought disquieted her.

“You’re quite right,” Florian interposed, with his airy eloquence. “The first two acts are good?—?distinctly good. Will wrote them in the Tyrol. The third’s a poor thing?—?mere fluff and feather: oh, what a falling off was there! It was written in London! But who can sing aright of Arcady in the mud of Mayfair? Who can sing of Zion by the willows of Babylon? Will drew his first inspiration from the sparkling air of Meran; it faded like a mist with the mists of the Channel.”

“The audience doesn’t seem to think so,” Rue put in, somewhat anxiously, as a hearty round of applause greeted Will by the footlights. “They feel it’s all right. They’re evidently satisfied, on the whole, with the nature of the dénoument.”

“If you look at the papers to-morrow morning,” Florian answered, carelessly, “you’ll find every candid critic disagrees with the audience and agrees with Mrs Sartoris. But what matter for that! It’s a very good play, with some very good tunes in it; and the actors have made it. I really didn’t think our dear friend Will could do anything so good?—?till I saw it interprete............