d the
absurd caricatures which were supposed to be people; he ridiculed the
writer for taking herself seriously (but without showing why exactly
she should not take herself seriously if she chose); he pitied her for
her disappointment when she should realise where in literature her
place would be; and he ended with a bitter diatribe against the works
of women generally, as being pretentious, amateur, without
originality, and wanting in humour, like the wretched stuff it had
been his painful duty to expose. Unfortunately for him, however, the
book appeared anonymously, and immediately attracted attention enough
to make him wish to discover it; and before he found out that Beth was
the author, he had committed himself to a highly eulogistic article
upon it in _The Patriarch_, which he took the precaution to sign, that
the coming celebrity might know to whom gratitude was due, and in
which he declared that there had arisen a new light of extraordinary
promise on the literary horizon. The book, as it happened, was not a
work of fiction at all.

* * * * *

Beth had heard nothing more from Dr. Maclure, and knew nothing about
him, except that he must have lost his degrading appointment, the Acts
having been rescinded. He had forwarded none of the letters her
friends had addressed to her at Slane. The Kilroys had endeavoured to
obtain her address from him, but he denied that he knew it. Unknown to
her, Mr. Kilroy, Mr. Hamilton-Wells, and Sir George Galbraith had
taken the best legal advice in the hope of getting her a divorce; but
there was little chance of that, as the acute mental suffering her
husband had caused her had merely injured her health and endangered
her reason, which does not amount to cruelty in the estimation of the
law. The matter was therefore allowed to drop, and Beth had not yet
begun to think of the future, when one day she received a letter from
Dan, couched in the most affectionate terms, entreating her to return
to him.

"You must own that I had cause for provocation," he said, "but I
confess that I was too hasty. It is natural, though, that a man should
feel it if his wife gets herself into such a position, however
innocently; and the more he has trusted, loved, and respected his
wife, the more violent will the reaction be. I know, however, that I
have had my own shortcomings since we were married, and therefore that
I should make every allowance for you. So let us be