He would once have said that such a state of things couldn't be, but now he discovered that it could be, and was. There was not at this stage: a periodical or magazine in London that Humphrey Kent did not essay in vain, and there were; not more than three or four (of the kind that one sees in a club or an educated woman's room) in which his stuff did not appear, at a substantial rate of payment, when it was supposed to be by Mrs. Deane-Pitt. There were not in London five papers making a feature of fiction, which did not repeatedly reject the man's best work, signed by himself, and accept his worst, signed by somebody else. Not five of the penny or sixpenny; publications--not five among the first or second-class--not five editors appraising fiction in editorial chairs who did not either find or assume a story bearing the unfamiliar name of "Humphrey Kent" to be below their standard, while they paid ten or twelve guineas for a tale scribbled by the same author in a couple of hours when it was falsely represented to be by Mrs. Deane-Pitt. During nine months he was never offered a single guinea by an editor for a tale. Every story that he submitted during nine months was declined, and every story that he gave to Mrs. Deane-Pitt was sold. Raging, he swore that some day he would set the facts forth in a novel; and even as he swore it, he knew that they would be challenged and that, in at least one literary organ of eminence, a critic would write, "We do not find the situation probable." Once an editor did know his name. He was the Editor of a fashionable magazine, and Kent had called at the office to inquire about a manuscript that had been lying there for a long while. The gentleman was very courteous: he did not remember the title, and, unfortunately, he could not put his hand on the tale at the moment, but he promised to have a search made for it, and to read it as soon as it was found. A letter from him (and the manuscript) reached Kent the same week. It was as considerate a letter of rejection as any one could dictate. The Editor began by saying that the story "was clever, as all Mr. Kent touched was clever, but----" And then he proceeded to analyse the plot, to demonstrate that the motive was too slight for the purpose. The tone was so kindly that, though Kent could not perceive the justice of the criticism--he was sensible enough to try--he felt a glow of gratitude towards the writer; and his appreciation was deepened when the following post brought him a copy of the current issue of the magazine, "With compliments." He opened it at once, and the first thing that he saw in it was a story done for Mrs. Deane-Pitt--the story that he had written, tired and insolently careless, about the mercenary girl and the jilted lover and the succession to the dukedom. And this, too, he swore, should be some day recorded in a novel, though a critic, knowing less about it than the author, would "not find the situation probable."