“She did,” he said, but not so enthusiastically as I had expected. “It's her favorite book. Now I don't know what your scheme is, and I suppose you know what you are doing better than I do; but I thought perhaps I had better come around before I got to work on the illustrations and see if, perhaps, you hadn't given me the wrong manuscript.” “No, that was the right manuscript,” I said. “Was there anything wrong about it?” Mr. Gilkowsky laughed nervously. “Oh, no!” he said. “But did you read it?” I told him I had not, because I had been so rushed with details connected with advertising the book. “Well,” he said, “I'll tell you. This girl of mine reads pretty trashy stuff, and she knows about all the cheap novels there are. She dotes on 'The Duchess,' and puts her last dime into Braddon. She knows them all by heart. Have you ever read 'Lady Audley's Secret'?” “I see,” I said. “One is a sequel to the other.” “No,” said Mr. Gilkowsky, “one is the other. Some one has flimflammed you and sold you a typewritten copy of 'Lady Audley's Secret' as a new novel.” V When I told Perkins, he merely remarked that he thought every publishing house ought to have some one in it who knew something about books, apart from the advertising end, although that was, of course, the most important. He said we might go ahead and publish “Lady Audley's Secret” under the title of “The Crimson Cord,” as such things had been done before; but the best thing to do would be to charge Rosa Belle Vincent's thousand dollars to profit and loss, and hustle for another novel--something reliable, and not shop-worn. Perkins had been studying the literature market a little, and he advised me to get something from Indiana this time; so I telegraphed an advertisement to the Indianapolis papers, and two days later we had ninety-eight historical novels by Indiana authors from which to choose. Several were of the right length; and we chose one, and sent it to Mr. Gilkowsky, with a request that he read it to his sweetheart. She had never read it before. We sent a detective to Dillville, Ind., where the author lived; and the report we received was most satisfactory. The author was a sober, industrious young man, just out of the high school, and bore a first-class reputation for honesty. He had never been in Virginia, where the scene of his story was laid, and they had no library in Dillville; and our detective assured us that the young man was in every way fitted to write a historical novel.