A very short time after this Lucy received the parcel of books which had been promised her. The season was growing to its height, and no time had been lost in putting the three volumes into the flimsy cloth binding which places the English novel on a platform of respectability, elevated far above its contemporary of other nations. The author did not bring her the first copy with his own hands, as he had vowed to do. Bertie had been afraid--he had done a thing which was perhaps too daring, and he did not venture to appear in his own person, to meet, perhaps, the storm of Lady Randolph’s displeasure, perhaps the alarmed reproachfulness of Lucy herself. He sent it instead, and awaited the reply with a heart which could scarcely beat higher with any personal excitement than it did with the tumult of hope and fear with which he awaited the issue of his first publication. It seemed to the inexperienced young fellow that the issues of life and death were in it, and that his fate would be fixed one way or another, and that without remedy. His doubt of Lucy’s reception of his offering, therefore, added but a slight element the more to a tumult of feeling already almost too great to be controlled. He brought it himself to the door, but would not go in; leaving a message that the parcel was to be given to Miss Trevor at once. Lady Randolph and she, for a wonder, were dining alone, and the parcel was undone when the dessert was placed on the table, and lay there in a very fashionably artistic binding, of no particular color, with “Imogen” scrawled in large uneven letters on the side. The ladies both took it up with great interest. A new book, though so many of the community have ceased to regard it as anything but a bore, is still interesting more or less to every little feminine circle that knows the author. Lady Randolph was going out to a succession of parties after dinner, and among them to a great intellectual gathering, where all the wits were to be assembled. “I must tell Mrs. Montagu about it,” she said; “I must speak to everybody about it. It is very attentive of the young man to send it at once. We must do what we can for him, Lucy. We must ask for it at all the libraries, and tell everybody to ask for it, and I will speak to the critics. I will speak to Cecilia,” she said, taking up the first volume. But after a momentary interval, a change came over Lady Randolph’s face. She uttered the invariable English monosyllable “Oh!” in startled and troubled tones; then turned upon her companion hastily: “Did you know of this, Lucy? My dear, my dear, how wrong! how imprudent! Why did not you mention it to me?”