Read it through once

It was through Miss Mitford that William Harness was first introduced to Talfourd, although, judging by certain circumstances which arose from time to time, we hold the opinion that William Harness, who demanded more from his friends than did Miss Mitford, never really appreciated the acquaintance. Harness was for ever questioning the other’s motives, and more than once hinted his suspicions to Miss Mitford who at once defended the other—as was her wont. Talfourd’s jealousy was, let us say, pardonable, but when it turned to venom, as it did, we dare not condone. Meeting Macready one evening of the following November, the conversation turned on Miss Mitford and a new play she was projecting and which Mr. Forrest,[27] a rival to Macready, was to produce. “I have no faith in her power of writing a play, and to that opinion Talfourd subscribed to-night—concurring in all I thought of her falsehood and baseness!” These are Macready’s own words, but fortunately Miss Mitford died without knowledge of them, otherwise her faith in her old idol would have been rudely shattered. Talfourd, of whom she had ever spoken kindly; whose career she had watched, glorying in his successes; who had himself praised her talent for the Drama and urged her to forsake all else for it, and now concurred in another’s disparaging references to that same talent—“concurring in all I thought of her falsehood and baseness!”