“He is lying there, in the next room, my poor boy. I thought he would have died this morning--oh, it is cruel, cruel! He is quite crushed by it. I tell him it is all a wicked plot, and that surely, surely, there will be some honest man who will do him justice! But, though I say it, I don’t put any faith in it, for where is there an honest critic?” cried Mrs. Russell; “from all I hear there is not such a thing to be found. They praise the people they know--people who court them and fawn on them; but it isn’t in the Russell blood to do that. And the worst of all,” she said, with a fresh flood of tears, “the worst of all--the thing that has just been the last blow--is that you have not stood by him, Lucy, you that kept on encouraging him, and have brought it all upon him.” “_I_ brought it all upon him!” Lucy’s consternation was almost beyond words. “Yes, Miss Trevor,” said the poor lady, hysterically. “He would never have done it had not you encouraged him--never! And now this is what is brought against him. Oh, they can not say a word against his talent,” she said; “not a word! They can not say the book is not beautiful; what they say is all about _that_, which was put into please _you_--and you have not the heart to stand up for him!” the mother cried. She was so much excited, and poured forth such tears and sobs, that Lucy found herself without a word to say. The trouble, no doubt, was real enough, but it was mixed with so much excitement and feverish exaggeration that the girl’s sympathetic heart was chilled; and yet she had so much to say. “But he must not put up with it,” cried Mrs. Russell; “he shall not put up with it if I can help it. He must write and tell them. And there is not one word of real criticism--not one word! Bertie himself says so; nothing but joking and jeering about the dedication. But I know whose hand that is--it is Lady Randolph who has done it. I knew she would interfere as soon as she thought--‘Bertie,’ I said, ‘don’t--don’t, for heaven’s sake! You will bring a hornet’s nest about your ears.’ But he always said ‘Mother, I must.’ And now to think that the girl herself, that has brought him into all this trouble, should not have the heart to stand up for him! Oh, it just shows what I’ve always said, the wickedness and hollowness of the world!”