“Well, no; not at his office. How is it that he manages to get away on an afternoon as he does?” “It’s very seldom,--only two or three times in a month,--when he really has a headache from sitting at his work. Dear me, how odd! I thought he told me everything, and he never mentioned your name.” “You needn’t mention mine, Mrs. Puffle, and the secret shall be kept. But you haven’t told me about the smoking. Is he as inveterate as ever?” “Of course he smokes. They all smoke. I suppose then he used always to be doing it before he married. I don’t think men ever tell the real truth about things, though girls always tell everything.” “And now about your sister’s novel?” asked Mr. Brown, who felt that he had mystified the little woman sufficiently about her husband. “Well, yes. She does want to get some money so badly! And it is clever;--isn’t it? I don’t think I ever read anything cleverer. Isn’t it enough to take your breath away when Orlando defends himself before the lords?” This referred to a very high flown passage which Mr. Brown had determined to cut out when he was thinking of printing the story for the pages of the “Olympus.” “And she will be so broken-hearted! I hope you are not angry with her because she wrote in that way.” “Not in the least. I liked her letters. She wrote what she really thought.” “That is so good of you! I told her that I was sure you were good-natured, because you answered so civilly. It was a kind of experiment of hers, you know.” “Oh,--an experiment!” “It is so hard to get at people. Isn’t it? If she’d just written, ‘Dear Sir, I send you a manuscript,’--you never would have looked at it:--would you?” “We read everything, Mrs. Puffle.” “But the turn for all the things comes so slowly; doesn’t it? So Polly thought----” “Polly,--what did Polly think?” “I mean Josephine. We call her Polly just as a nickname. She was so anxious to get you to read it at once! And now what must we do?” Mr. Brown sat silent awhile, thinking. Why did they call Josephine de Montmorenci Polly? But there was the fact of the MS., let the name of the author be what it might. On one thing he was determined. He would take no steps till he had himself seen the lady who wrote the novel. “You’ll go to the gentlemen in Paternoster Row immediately; won’t you?” asked Mrs. Puffle, with a pretty little beseeching look which it was very hard to resist. “I think I must ask to see the authoress first,” said Mr. Brown.