that Guy Walsingham had made a very favorable impression on her Imperial Highness. Indeed I think every one did so, and that, like the money-market or the national honor, her Imperial Highness was constitutionally sensitive. There was a certain gladness, a perceptible bustle in the air, however, which I thought slightly anomalous in a house where a great author lay critically ill. “Le roy est mort—vive le roy!” I was reminded that another great author had already stepped into his shoes. When I came down again after the nurse had taken possession I found a strange gentleman hanging about the hall and pacing to and fro by the closed door of the drawing-room. This personage was florid and bald; he had a big red mustache and wore showy knickerbockers—characteristics all that fitted into my conception of the identity of Dora Forbes. In a moment I saw what had happened: the author of “The Other Way Round” had just alighted at the portals of Prestidge, but had suffered a scruple to restrain him from penetrating further. I recognized his scruple when, pausing to listen at his gesture of caution, I heard a shrill voice lifted in a sort of rhythmic, uncanny chant. The famous reading had begun, only it was the author of “Obsessions” who now furnished the sacrifice. The new visitor whispered to me that he judged something was going on that he oughtn’t to interrupt.
“Miss Collop arrived last night,” I smiled, “and the princess has a thirst for the inédit.”
Dora Forbes lifted his bushy brows, “Miss Collop?”
“Guy Walsingham, your distinguished confrère—or shall I say your formidable rival?”
“Oh!” growled Dora Forbes. Then he added: “Shall I spoil it, if I go in?”
“I should think nothing could spoil it!” I ambiguously laughed.
Dora Forbes evidently felt the dilemma; he gave an irritated crook to his mustache. “Shall I go in?” he presently asked.
We looked at each other hard a moment; then I expressed something bitter that was in me, expressed it in an infernal “Do!” After this I got out into the air, but not so fast as not to hear, when the door of the drawing-room opened, the disconcerted drop of Miss Collop’s public manner: she must have been in the midst of the larger latitude. Producing with extreme rapidity, Guy Walsingham has just published a work in which amiable people who are not initiated have been pained to see the genius of a sister-novelist held up to unmistakable ridicule; so fresh an exhibition does it seem to them of the dreadful way men have always treated women. Dora Forbes, it is true, at the present hour, is immensely pushed by Mrs. Wimbush, and has sat for his portrait to the young artist she protects, sat for it not only in oils, but in monumental alabaster.
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