“No alien hand perceptible.  Ho! ho! ho!  But it’s stunning, isn’t it?  I do believe the old fraud of a book is going to win through.  This ought to satisfy Doria, don’t you think so?”

“It ought to,” said Barbara.  “I’ll send it up to her room.”

But Doria with Adrian’s impeccability on the brain—­and how could a work of Adrian’s be impeccable when an alien hand, however imperceptible, had touched it?—­was not satisfied.  Towards noon, when she came downstairs, she met Jaffery on the terrace, with a familiar little knitting of the brow before which his welcoming smile faded.

“It’s all right up to a point,” she said, handing him back the letter.  “Nobody with the rudiments of a brain could fail to recognise the merits of Adrian’s work.  But no novelist is possessed of the critical faculty.”

“Then why,” asked Jaffery, after the way of men, “did you ask me to send him the novel?”

“I took it for granted he had common sense,” replied Doria, after the way of women.

“And he hasn’t any?”

“Read the thing again.”

Jaffery scanned the page mechanically and looked up:  “Well, what’s to be done now?”

“I should like to compare the proofs with Adrian’s original manuscript.  Where is it?”

Here was the question we had all dreaded.  Jaffery lied convincingly.

“It went to the printers, my dear, and of course they’ve destroyed it.”

“I thought everything was typed nowadays.”

“Typing takes time,” replied Jaffery serenely.  “And I’m not an advocate of feather-beds and rose-water baths for printers.  As I wanted to rush the book out as quickly as possible, I didn’t see why I should pamper them with type.  Have you the original manuscript of ’The Diamond Gate’?”

“No,” said Doria.

“Well—­don’t you see?” said Jaffery, with a smile.

For the first time I praised Old Man Jornicroft.  He had brought up his daughter far from the madding mechanics of the literary life.  To my great relief, Doria swallowed the incredible story.

“It was careless of you not to have given special instructions for the manuscript to be saved, I must say.  But if it’s gone, it’s gone.  I’m not unreasonable.”

“I think you are,” said Barbara, who had been arranging flowers in the drawing-room, and had emerged onto the terrace.  “You made Jaffery submit his careful editing to an expert, and you’re honourably bound to accept the expert’s verdict.”

“I do accept it,” she retorted with a toss of her head and a flash of her eyes.  “Have I ever said I didn’t?  But I’m at liberty to keep to my own opinion.”

Jaffery scratched his whiskers and beard and screwed up his face as he did in moments of perplexity.

“What exactly do you want changed?” he asked.

“Just those few coarse touches you admit are yours.”