"They will be published anonymously, of course. I could not endure to
be pointed at as the author of 'The Sceptic Soul.' To feel that every
eye was upon me--at the opera--in the Row--everywhere! It would be too
dreadful. I should be proud to know that I had influenced my age--given
a new bent to thought--but no one must be able to point at me."

"'Thou canst not say I did it,'" quoted Lord Mallow. "I entirely
appreciate your feelings. Publicity of that sort must be revolting to a
delicate mind. I should think Byron would have enjoyed life a great
deal better if he had never been known as the author of 'Childe
Harold.' He reduced himself to a social play-actor--and always had to
pose in his particular role--the Noble Poet. If Bacon really wrote the
plays we call Shakespeare's, and kept the secret all his life, he was
indeed the wisest of mankind."

"You have done nothing but praise me," said Lady Mabel, after a
thoughtful pause, during which she had trifled with the golden clasp of
her volume; "I want you to do something more than that. I want you to
advise--to tell me where I am redundant--to point out where I am weak.
I want you to help me in the labour of polishing."

Lord Mallow pulled his whisker doubtfully. This was dreadful. He should
have to go into particulars presently, to say what lines pleased him
best, which of the various meters into which the tragedy was broken
up--like a new suburb into squares and crescents and streets--seemed to
him happiest and most original.

"Can you trust me with that precious volume?" he asked. "If you can, I
will spend the quiet hours of the night in pondering over its pages,
and will give you the result of my meditations to-morrow."

Mabel put the book into his hand with a grateful smile.

"Pray be frank with me," she pleaded. "Praise like yours is perilous."

Lord Mallow kissed her hand this time, instead of merely pressing it,
and went away radiant, with the velvet-bound book under his arm.

"She's a sweet girl," he said to himself, as he hailed a cab. "I wish
she wasn't engaged to that Hampshire booby, and I wish she didn't write
poetry. Hard that I should have to do the Hampshire booby's work! If I
were to leave this book in a hansom now--there'd be an awful situation!"

Happily for the rising statesman, he was blest with a clever young
secretary, who wrote a good many letters for him, read blue-books, got
up statistics, and interviewed obtrusive visitors from the G