Read it through once

After the performance the principal actors repaired to Talfourd’s house, there to partake of a sumptuous repast to which over fifty people—leading lights in Art, Letters and the Sciences—sat down. It was a great function, marked by many complimentary speeches, as the occasion demanded. Macready, of course, shared the honours with Talfourd, and, in a moment of exaltation, turned to Miss Mitford and asked her whether the present occasion did not stimulate her to write a play. It was an ill-chosen remark, for she was then at the very height of popularity as the author of the successful _Rienzi_, but she quickly replied, “Will you act it?” Macready did not answer, and Harness, who was close by, chaffingly remarked to Miss Mitford, “Aye, hold him to that.” “When I heard that _that_ was Harness, the man who, I believe, inflicted such a deep and assassin-like wound upon me—through _Blackwood’s Magazine_—I could not repress the expression of indignant contempt which found its way to my face, and over-gloomed the happy feeling that had before been there.” This was Macready’s written comment on the incident, but how he had misjudged Harness throughout this unpleasant affair has been dealt with by us in a previous chapter.