as I think all verse should be
understood. Why should I keep all my frankness till after the first of
August? Why should the lover be less sincere than the husband? I will
be truthful even at the risk of offending you."

"Pray do," cried Mabel, with ill-suppressed irritation. "Sincerity is
such a delightful thing. No doubt my critics are sincere. They give me
the honest undisguised truth."

Rorie saw that his betrothed's literary failure was a subject to be
carefully avoided in future.

"My poor Vixen," he said to himself, with oh! what deep regret,
"perhaps it was not one of the least of your charms that you never
wrote poetry."

Lord Mallow was coming to Ashbourne for the fortnight before the
wedding. He had made himself wondrously agreeable to the Duke, and the
Duke had invited him. The House would be up by that time. It was a
delightful season for the Forest. The heather would be in bloom on all
the open heights, the glades of Mark Ash would be a solemn world of
greenery and shadow, a delicious place for picnics, flirtation, and
gipsy tea-drinkings. Lord Mallow had only seen the Forest in the
winter. It would be a grand opportunity for him.

He came, and Lady Mabel received him with a sad sweet smile. The
reviews had all appeared by this time: and, except in the _West
Dulmarsh Gazette_ and the _Ratdiff Highway Register_, there had not
been one favourable notice.

"There is a dreadful unanimity about my critics, is there not?" said
the stricken poetess, when she and Lord Mallow found themselves alone
together in one of the orchid-houses, breathing a perfumed atmosphere
at eighty degrees, vaporous, balmy, slumberous.

"You have made a tremendous mistake, Lady Mabel," said Lord Mallow.

"How do you mean?"

"You have given the world your great book without first educating your
public to receive and understand it. If Browning had done the same
thing--if Browning had burst at once upon the world with 'The Ring and
the Book' he would have been as great a failure as--as--you at present
imagine yourself to be. You should have sent forth something smaller.
You should have made the reading world familiar with a style, too
original, and of too large a power and scope, to please quickly. A
volume of ballads and idyls--a short story in simple verse--would have
prepared the way for your dramatic poem. Suppose Goethe had begun his
literary career with the second part of 'Faust'! He was too wise for
that, and wrote himse