thing, all fears of financial difficulty were at an end. Her first
book had brought her more money than she had ever had in her life,
and the publisher's offer for her second outweighed her most
ambitious desires. She was independent--she could earn sufficient,
and more than sufficient to keep herself in positive luxury if she
chose,--but for this she had no taste. Her little rooms in Miss
Leigh's house satisfied all her ideas of rest and comfort, and she
stayed on with the kind old lady by choice and affection, helping
her in many ways, and submitting to her guidance in every little
social matter with the charming humility of a docile and obedient
spirit all too rare in these days when youth is more full of
effrontery than modesty. She had managed her "literary" business
so far well and carefully, representing herself as the private
secretary of an author who wished to remain anonymous, and who had
gone abroad, entrusting her with his manuscript to "place" with
any suitable firm that would make a suitable offer. The ruse would
hardly have succeeded in the case of any ordinary piece of work,
but the book itself was of too exceptional a quality to be passed
over, and the firm to which it was first offered recognised this
and accepted it without parley, astute enough to see its
possibilities and to risk its chances of success. And now she
realised that her little plot might be discovered any day, and
that she would have to declare herself as the writer of a strange
and brilliant book which was the talk of the moment.

"I wonder what they will say when they know it at Briar Farm!" she
thought, with a smile and a half sigh.

Briar Farm seemed a long way off in these days. She had written
occasionally both to Priscilla and Robin Clifford; giving her