Sylvie said that it was all hurried up in the worst of taste. She had not believed Maud would be so ready to snap up a rich man; but--ah! well, your romantic, novel-writing folks had an eye to the main chance, like everybody else. Edith answered daringly: "Why not say at once, Sylvie, that you're envious because Maud is going to be as rich as you are? Goodness knows, I'm glad one of the Van Zandts will be rich at last, so that you will not be able always to fling our poverty in our faces!" CHAPTER XLI. Maud declared that the trousseau must be a very simple and quiet one, since almost everything must come from the pockets of Eliot and Edith. But the brother and sister overruled her objections. "As if we had any other use for our savings!" cried Edith. "We are going to spend every penny. Do you think we are going to let our sister go to her rich husband plain and shabby?" So the order was given for several very handsome dresses, among them an ivory white satin, veiled in lace, for the bridal-dress. But before the bills came in from milliners and modistes the young authoress was able to pay them out of her own purse. And it came about in this wise. About four weeks after her engagement to the rich Southerner she received a visit from her Boston publisher. He put into her hand a check for several hundred dollars, the receipts from her novel which until now had not paid for the first costs of its publication. "I congratulate you, Miss Van Zandt," he said. "Your novel is suddenly becoming popular. The book-sellers report numerous calls for it, and in consequence I have large orders." Maud's lip quivered, and her blue-gray eyes, so like Eliot's, dimmed with happy tears. "At last!" she exclaimed, joyously. "Oh, I had ceased to hope or expect anything!" "I have taken pains to inquire into the cause of your success after the unfriendliness of the critics had so long injured its sale," he said; "and I have found out that the real merits of your novel have at last been discovered and revealed by a friendly critic." "I thought they were all my mortal foes!" she exclaimed. He smiled, and answered: "Not this one, at least, for he or she has been very frank, as well as very just. While the defects of your book are plainly acknowledged, its many beauties and merits are enthusiastically dwelt upon, and the fact of the author's tender youth is eloquently dilated on in excusing its faults." The girl's sweet eyes dilated wildly. "Who could have known that?" she asked him. "I can not tell. I understood that the writer is a reviewer of books for a noted New York magazine. I have not learned the name, but I will find it out for you, Miss Van Zandt," promised the genial publisher. "Pray, do so, if possible; and also please get the magazine containing the friendly review of my poor book. It will make me so happy to read it, and to write a letter of thanks to my good angel!" she exclaimed, fervently.