When Bessie Fairfax reached Fairfield, Roberts informed her in a depressed manner that her ladyship was waiting dinner.  Bessie started at this view of her impolite absence, and hastened to the drawing-room to apologize.  But Lady Latimer coldly waived her explanations, and Bessie felt very self-reproachful until an idea occurred to her what she would do.  After a brief retreat and rapid toilet she reappeared with Harry’s manuscript in her hand, and with simple craft displaying the roll, she said, “This is for us to read—­a true story.  It is not in print yet, but Mr. Harry Musgrave writes a plain hand.  We are to give him our opinion of it.  I believe that, after all, he will be a poor author—­one of my heroes, Lady Latimer.”

“One of your heroes, Elizabeth?  There is nothing very heroic in Mr. Logger,” rejoined my lady softening, and holding out her hand for the manuscript.  “Is the young man very ill?”

“No, no—­not so ill that we need fear his dying inglorious without giving the world something to remember him by, but discouraged by the dicta of friends and physicians, who consign him to idleness and obscurity for a year or two.”

“Which idleness and obscurity I presume it is your wish to alleviate?” said Lady Latimer with half-contemptuous resignation.  “Come to dinner now:  we will read your hero’s story afterward.”

Lady Latimer’s personal interests were so few that it was a necessity for her generous soul to adopt the interests of other people.  She kept Bessie reading until eleven o’clock, when she was dismissed to bed and ordered to leave the manuscript below, lest she should sit up and read it when she ought to be asleep.  But what Bessie might not do my lady was quite at liberty to do herself, and she made an end of the tale before she retired.  And not only that.  She wrote to Mr. Logger to recommend a publisher, and to ask how proper payment could be assured to a young and unknown author.  She described the story to the veteran critic as a sad, pretty story of true love (which people go on believing in), sensibly written, without serious flaws of taste or grammar, and really worth reading if one had nothing else to do.  In the morning she informed Bessie of what she had done.  Bessie was not quite sure that Harry would feel gratified at being placed under the protection of her ladyship and Mr. Logger; but as she could not well revoke the letter that was written, she said nothing against it, and Lady Latimer was busy and happy for a week in the expectation that she was doing something for “the unfortunate young man.”  But at the week’s end Mr. Logger dashed her confidence with the answer that he had not been able to meet with any publisher willing to pay money down for a sad, pretty story of true love by an unknown author:  sad, pretty stories of true love were a drug in the literary market.  She was grievously disappointed.  Bessie was the same, and as she had confessed a hope to Harry, she had to carry to him the tidings of failure.  If he was sorry, it was for her regret, but they soon began to talk of other things.  They had agreed that if good luck came they would be glad, and if bad luck they would pass it lightly over.