She wished this wicked wish a thousand times more strongly, half a minute later. Never, in these three years, had she seen Hubert so affected by a notice. Great veins swelled out on his forehead, till she was really terrified. She could pretend no longer not to notice. "What is it, Hubert?" she asked as he said nothing. "I hope not a bad one?" "This is too scandalous," he cried, half choked and speaking like a pompous old man in his anger. "Where will the newspapers ever stop?" "What have they said now, dear?" He missed the tragic resignation in that one word "now." "Read it," he said and thrust it almost roughly at her, as though blaming the whole world. It did not seem, however, as though he could wait for her opinion. "Newer," "practically unknown," he fired out at intervals, and other adjectives. But she heard none of them. The paper swam before her eyes and every dim word filled her with a sick dread, a resentful wonder, an absolute despair, for this is what she saw: "AUTHOR'S WIFE FIASCO "OFFICIAL REVELATIONS "Suburban tea-tables need buzz no more with questions as to the identity of that now famous Author's Wife whose recent confessions have raised such a pother. A representative of this paper found Mr. Blatchley, this morning, at last in an unbending mood. "'The secret is out,' said the publisher, 'the author in question is Mr. Hubert Brett. The book, I may add, is naturally by his wife. There were reasons till now why her identity should not be divulged.' "Those reasons will perhaps be guessed by all who remember the fierce controversy that raged recently and the big names that were thrown about, also the big sales. Whether these last will be helped by this official revelation will remain to be seen. The context had certainly prepared us for the wife-sacrificing author to be some one slightly better known. Mr. Hubert Brett is of the newer school of novelists, whose work is practically unknown to the bigger public. From _Who's Who_ we learn that he has written some fourteen novels since 1899, and of these _Wandering Stars_ is possibly the most familiar to library-readers. "In this rather disappointing manner the Mystery of the Author's Wife leaves the select company of The Man in the Iron Mask, Jack the Ripper, Shakespeare, The Lady and the Tiger and other insolubles, to rank for ever with The Mango Tree, Fiona Macleod, The Englishwoman, and other mysteries which stupidly got solved." Her eyes somehow deciphered the main points, and then she sat looking at the thin slip, seeing nothing. "Practically unknown," suddenly came to her ears; "considering that _Wandering Stars_ sold close upon six thousand!"