here--and the Bishop is sure to happen to be here!"

Mrs. Clinch repressed her amusement. "The picture you draw is a
lurid one," she conceded, "but your modesty strikes me as abnormal,
especially in an author. The chances are that some of the clippings
will be rather pleasant reading. The critics are not all union men."

Mrs. Fetherel stared. "Union men?"

"Well, I mean they don't all belong to the well-known
Society-for-the-Persecution-of-Rising-Authors. Some of them have
even been known to defy its regulations and say a good word for a
new writer."

"Oh, I dare say," said Mrs. Fetherel, with the laugh her cousin's
epigram exacted. "But you don't quite see my point. I'm not at all
nervous about the success of my book--my publisher tells me I have
no need to be--but I _am_ afraid of its being a succes de scandale."

"Mercy!" said Mrs. Clinch, sitting up.

The butler and footman at this moment appeared with the tea-tray,
and when they had withdrawn, Mrs. Fetherel, bending her brightly
rippled head above the kettle, continued in a murmur of avowal, "The
title, even, is a kind of challenge."

"'Fast and Loose,'" Mrs. Clinch mused. "Yes, it ought to take."

"I didn't choose it for that reason!" the author protested. "I
should have preferred something quieter--less pronounced; but I was