of the famous anonymous novel.  She had been so humiliated, poor child, by the insufferable rudeness of that Western girl that she naturally wished to make good.  And how modest and unselfish she had been to make the attempt to exalt another author when she herself was so much greater.  Wilbur fully exonerated Margaret for what she did in the case of Martha Wallingford in the light of this revelation.  His modest, generous, noble wife had honestly endeavoured to do the girl a favour, to assist her in spite of herself and she had received nothing save rudeness, ingratitude, and humiliation in return.  Now, she was asserting herself.  She was showing all Fairbridge that she was the one upon whom honour should be showered.  She was showing him and rightfully.  He remembered with compunction his severity toward her on account of the Martha Wallingford affair, his beautiful, gifted Margaret!  Why, even then she might have electrified that woman’s club by making the revelation which she had won to-night and reading this same selection from her own book.  He had not read Martha Wallingford’s Hearts Astray.  He thought that the title was enough for him.  He knew that it must be one of the womanish, hysterical, sentimental type of things which he despised.  But Margaret had been so modest that she had held back from the turning on the search-light of her own greater glory.  She had made the effort which had resulted so disastrously to obtain a lesser one, and he had condemned her.  He knew that women always used circuitous ways toward their results, just as men used sledge-hammer ones.  Why should a man criticise a woman’s method any more than a woman criticise a man’s?  Wilbur, blushing like a girl with pride and delight, listened to his wife and fairly lashed himself.  He was wholly unworthy of such a woman, he knew.

When the reading was over and people crowded around Margaret and congratulated her, he stood aloof.  He felt that he could not speak of this stupendous thing with her until they were alone.  Then Doctor Sturtevant’s great bulk pressed against him and his sonorous voice said in his ear, “By Jove, old man, your wife has drawn a lucky number.  Congratulations.”  Wilbur gulped as he thanked him.  Then Sturtevant went on talking about a matter which was rather dear to Wilbur’s own ambition and which he knew had been tentatively discussed:  the advisability of his running for State Senator in the autumn.  Wilbur knew it would be a good thing for him professionally, and at the bottom of his heart he knew that his wife’s success had been the last push toward his own.  Other men came in and began talking, leading from his wife’s success toward his own, until Wilbur realised himself as dazzled.