"They are come, indeed," said Sophy, re-entering the room softly: "I hear
their voices at the threshold."

The Cobbler passed by in silence, descended the stairs, and conducted
Vance and Lionel into the Comedian's chamber; there he left them, his
brow overcast. Gentleman Waife had displeased him sorely.




CHAPTER VIII.

Showing the arts by which a man, however high in the air Nature may
have formed his nose, may be led by that nose, and in directions
perversely opposite to those which, in following his nose, he might
be supposed to take; and, therefore, that nations the most liberally
endowed with practical good sense, and in conceit thereof, carrying
their noses the most horizontally aloof, when they come into
conference with nations more skilled in diplomacy and more practised
in "stage-play," end by the surrender of the precise object which it
was intended they should surrender before they laid their noses
together.

We all know that Demosthenes said, Everything in oratory was acting,--
stage-play. Is it in oratory alone that the saying holds good? Apply it
to all circumstances of fife, "stage-play, stage-play, stage-play!"--only
/ars est celare artem/, conceal the art. Gleesome in soul to behold his
visitors, calculating already on the three pounds to be extracted from
them, seeing in that hope the crisis in his own checkered existence, Mr.