'The tickets will be only disposed of by our friends, you obtuse creature,' said Mrs. Cinqmars; but it's not half so much fun acting before a lot of people you see every day, as doing it in real earnest for a benevolent purpose. I shall expect you to sell something like fifty-pounds worth of tickets, and to bring all the heavy swells you can scrape together. I want the affair to be really brilliant. But that is not the point we have to discuss to-day. Before we can print our programmes or stir a step in the business, we must definitively settle our pieces, and cast them.'

This speech was uttered in a friendly little gathering beneath the umbrage of perfumed limes, the river flashing in the foreground, a few of Mrs. Cinqmars' dearest friends, of both sexes the Viscount, Major Bolding, a young man in the War Office, with a tenor voice and light hair parted in the middle, the young lady with raven ringlets, a fair and dumpy young person, whose husband was in America, and Elizabeth Luttrell-seated in friendly conclave round a rustic table, scattered with pens, ink, and paper; for it is quite impossible to achieve an arrangement of this kind without an immense waste of penmanship and letter-paper. There was the usual confusion of tongues, everybody thinking he or she knew more about private theatricals than any one else - Major Bolding, because the fellows in his regiment had once got up something at Aldershott; the dumpy young person, because she had acted charades with her sisters in the nursery when she was a mite;' the tenor in the War Office, because his father had known Charles Mathews the elder; the contralto, because she had gone to school with a niece of Mrs. Charles Kean's. Only Elizabeth acknowledged her ignorance. 'I know nothing about plays,' she said, 'except that I doat upon them.'

'Whatever play we choose, Lizzie, I mean you to be in it,' said Mrs. Cinqmars, and Elizabeth did not protest against the arrangement. She was enraptured at the thought of acting in a play-of living for one brief night the dazzling magical life of that fairy stageworld which was so new to her.

About a hundred plays were suggested, briefly discussed, and rejected. Mrs. Cinqmars seemed to know every dramatic work that had been written. Every one, except Elizabeth and Mr. Cinqmars, had his or her one idea, by which he or she stuck resolutely. Lord Paulyn voted for Box and Cox, and could not be persuaded to extend his ideas beyond that masterpiece. The tenor proposed To oblige Benson, because he knew some people who had acted it last Christmas down in Hertfordshire; and I'm told it went off remarkably well, you know,' he said; and people laughed a good deal, except one old gentleman in the front row, who went to sleep and snored.'

'You stupid people!' cried Mrs. Cinqmars; 'don't go on harp

ing upon one string. Those are mere insignificant farces; and I want a grand piece that will play two hours and a half.'

After this came a string of suggestions, all alike useless.

'I only wish our men were a little better,' said Mrs. Cinqmars, with a despondent survey of her forces. There is a piece which I should like above all others; but it wants good acting. There are not too many people in it, and no troublesome scenery. I mean Masks and Faces.'

Every one knew Masks and Faces, every one admired the play; but the gentlemen were doubtful as to their capacity for the characters. 'I'll play nothing but Box,' said Lord Paulyn; 'I think I could do that.'

'I don't mind what I do, as long as it's something to make the people laugh,' said Major Bolding.

Then you'd better try tragedy,' suggested Mr. Hartley, the tenor.

'They're playing the piece at the Adelphi, Lizzie,' said Mrs. Cinqmars, intent upon her own deliberations, and ignoring trivial interruptions. We'll all go to see it this evening. You shall play Peg Woffington. Major Bolding will do pretty well for Vane. O yes, you must do it; I'll coach you. Cinqmars and Mr. Hartley can play Triplet and Colley Cibber; you, Flory'-to the dumpy young person- will make a capital Kitty Clive; and you, Lord Paulyn, must be our villain. I can get a couple of newspaper men to play Snarl and Soaper, the two critics. No remonstrances. I know you are all sticks; but we all know what great things can be done by a bundle of sticks. You'll all learn your words perfectly without an hour's delay. Never mind the acting. We'll arrange all that at rehearsal. The words and the dresses are the two great points. You must all look as if you had walked out of a picture by Ward or Frith. You'll call at the Adelphi this afternoon, Major, and engage half-a-dozen stalls for the rest of the week; and mind, I shall expect to see them occupied every night before the curtain goes up.'

After this came a great deal of discussion. Major Bolding declared his incapacity for domestic drama; Lord Paulyn insisted that he could soar no higher than Box.

'I don't think I should break down in that business with the mutton-chop and rasher; and if I had plaid trousers with big checks and a red wig, I think I might make them laugh a little,' he said; but my attempting a stage villain is too absurd. Why, I should have to scowl, shouldn't I, and cork my eyebrows, and drag one foot behind the other when I walked ?'

'Nothing of the kind. It is a light-comedy villain; only a slight modification of your own haw-haw style. You have only to see the piece acted half-a-dozen times or so. You shall have a wig and costume that will almost play the part for you.'

Lord Paulyn groaned aloud. 'Sit in a stiflin' hot theatre six nights runnin' to see the same fellers in the same play!' he remonstrated.

'Only a small sacrifice to dramatic art and the indigent stockbrokers' widows,' said Mrs. Cinqmars soothingly.

She was a determined little woman; and once having taken up the business, carried it through with unflagging energy.

The programmes were printed forthwith, on lace-bordered paper of palest rose colour and mauve, perfumed to distraction by the arts of Rimmel.

Drawing-room Performance

AT THE RANCHO, FULHAM (THE RIVERSIDE VILLA OF
H. DU C. DE CINQMARS, ESQ.),

FOR THE

BENEFIT OF THE WIDOWS OF INDIGENT STOCKBROKERS
(Members of the House alone eligible).

Tickets, to be obtained only from the Committee, one guinea.

A limited number of reserved fauteuils at two guineas.

Performance to commence at nine precisely. Carriages may be ordered for half-past eleven.

For five consecutive nights did Mrs. Cinqmars and her devoted slaves occupy the stalls of the Adelphi, gazing upon and listening to the performance of Mrs. Stirling, Mr. Benjamin Webster, and other accomplished masters of the dramatic art. The blood in the veins of the gallant Major ran cold, as the fast-congealing waterdrops of an Alpine stream among the frozen mountain tops, when he watched the movements and listened to the words of Mr. Vane, and considered that he, after his feeble fashion, must needs reflect the image of that skilful actor who sustained the part. But by diligent perusal of the comedy in the solitude of their own apartments, and by force of seeing the play five times running, and being urged to attention and interest by the energetic little stage-manageress who

sat between them, the Major on the one side, and the Viscount on the other, did ultimately arrive at some idea of what they were expected to do; and when the first rehearsal took place at the Rancho, after the completion of these nightly studies, Mrs. Cinqmars pronounced herself very well satisfied with her company. She had beaten up recruits here and there in the mean time, and had filled her programme. The tickets had been selling furiously. Almost every one had heard of the Rancho; and aspiring middle-class people who did not know Mrs. Cinqmars were glad of this opportunity of placing themselves upon a level with people who did. There was no rush of those lofty personages whom Mrs. Cinqmars had spoken of as 'heavy swells.' A good deal of solicitation would have been needed to bring these to share the free-and-easy hospitalities of the riverside villa; but society on the lower ranges parted freely with their guineas for gilt-edged tickets of delicate rose-coloured pasteboard, entitling them to behold the mysteries of that notorious abode. Lord Paulyn, hard pressed by the energetic Flora, did contrive to enlist the sympathies of various horsey noblemen in the cause of the stockbrokers' widows-men who were curious, in their own words, to see how big a fool Paulyn would make of himself'-but stately dowagers or patrician beauties he could gather none. Major Bolding, however, beat up the quarters of wealthy merchants and shipowners, and secured a handsome attendance of diamonds and millinery for the limited number of fauteuils; and although the aspiring soul of Mrs. Cinqmars languished for a more aristocratic assembly, she was tolerably contented with the idea of a gathering which would fill her spacious room, and in outward show would equal the best.

'If one has not what one loves, one must love what one has,' said the little woman, flinging back her flowing raven locks with a sigh of resignation. We've sold all the tickets, and that's a grand point, and we shall have at least a hundred pounds for the widows; odious snuffy old creatures, I daresay, and not worth half the trouble we are taking for them. A thousand thanks, Major, for your exertions in Tyburnia, and to you, Lord Paulyn, for your labours at Tattersall's. I really think we shall make a success. Miss Luttrell is a magnificent Woffington.'

'Egad, she'd be magnificent in anything,' said the Viscount rapturously. I always think, if there ever was such a person as Helen, she must have been like Elizabeth Luttrell. She's such an out-and-out beauty. Don't you know in Homer, when she came out on the ramparts where the old men were sitting, though I daresay they had been abusing her like old boots before she showed up, the moment they saw her they knocked under, and thought a ten years' war was hardly too much to have paid for the privilege of looking at her. Elizabeth is just that kind of woman. It's no matter how she carries on, a man must adore her.'

'I say ditto to Mr. Burke,' said the Major.

It's a pity she should marry a country parson, isn't it?' asked Mrs. Cinqmars, who had been made acquainted with Elizabeth's engagement by the damsel herself, in a moment of confidence.

Fifty to one against that marriage ever coming off,' said the Major; a pretty girl always begins with a detrimental, just to get her hand in. I daresay those Gunning sisters in King George's time were engaged to some needy beggars before they came up to London, and took the town by storm. I can't fancy Miss Luttrell settling down to the goody-goody kind of life, with a sanctimonious fellow in a white choker.'

'No, by Jove!' cried Lord Paulyn, 'I can fancy anything sooner than that. But she's just the sort of girl to do anything, however preposterous, if she once set her mind upon it.'

This was a fragment of confidential talk in Mrs. Cinqmars' boudoir, which at this period was littered with court swords, three-cornered hats, flowing periwigs, and other such paraphernalia. The important night came at last, in an interval of tropical weather, the thermometer at eighty-six in the shade, all the greensward in the parks burnt to a dismal tawny hue, arid as a simoom-blasted desert. Heavy insupportable weather, at which Anglo-Indians and other travellers in distant climes, from China to Peru, grumbled sorely, declaring that they had encountered nothing so oppressive as this sultry English heat in Bengal, or Japan, or Lima, or Honolulu, as the case might be. A damp, penetrating heat, as of a gigantic hot-house. London and her wide-spreading suburbs wrapped in a dim shroud of summer mist, pale and impalpable as the ghost of some dead-and-gone November fog, and all the denizens of the vast city visibly dissolving, as in a Turkish bath. Threatening weather, with the perpetual menace of a thunderstorm impending in the leaden sky.

It will be rather too bad if the storm were to come to-night,' said Mrs. Cinqmars, as she leaned against the embrasure of an open window languidly, after the last rehearsal, which had been prolonged to within a couple of hours of the performance. But I shouldn't at all wonder if it did. Hark at those horrible little birds twittering, as if they were saying, O yes, it will come soon; it can't keep off much longer; I feel it coming. And how the laurel-leaves shiver!'

'We've sold the tickets,' said the Major philosophically; 'the indigent widows will be none the worse off if it rains bucketfuls all the evening.'

'Do you think that will reconcile me to our play being a failure?' cried the lady indignantly. As if those snuffy old things were the first consideration!'

'But you do it for their sakes, you know.'

For their sakes! Do you suppose I pay Madame Fantini un