the critics.  It should be.  How then to come at them to, get it done?  As he was not a member of the honourable literary craft, and regarded its arcana altogether externally, it may be confessed of him that he deemed the Incorruptible corruptible;—­not, of course, with filthy coin slid into sticky palms.  Critics are human, and exceedingly, beyond the common lot, when touched; and they are excited by mysterious hints of loftiness in authorship; by rumours of veiled loveliness; whispers, of a general anticipation; and also Editors can jog them.  Redworth was rising to be a Railway King of a period soon to glitter with rails, iron in the concrete, golden in the visionary.  He had already his Court, much against his will.  The powerful magnetic attractions of those who can help the world to fortune, was exercised by him in spite of his disgust of sycophants.  He dropped words to right and left of a coming work by Antonia.  And who was Antonia?—­Ah! there hung the riddle.—­An exalted personage?—­So much so that he dared not name her even in confidence to ladies; he named the publishers.  To men he said he was at liberty to speak of her only as the most beautiful woman of her time.  His courtiers of both sexes were recommended to read the new story, the princess Egeria.

Oddly, one great lady of his Court had heard a forthcoming work of this title spoken of by Percy Dacier, not a man to read silly fiction, unless there was meaning behind the lines:  that is, rich scandal of the aristocracy, diversified by stinging epigrams to the address of discernible personages.  She talked of the princess Egeria:  nay, laid her finger on the identical Princess.  Others followed her.  Dozens were soon flying with the torch:  a new work immediately to be published from the pen of the Duchess of Stars!—­And the Princess who lends her title to the book is a living portrait of the Princess of Highest Eminence, the Hope of all Civilization.—­Orders for copies of the princess Egeria reached the astonished publishers before the book was advertized.

Speaking to editors, Redworth complimented them with friendly intimations of the real authorship of the remarkable work appearing.  He used a certain penetrative mildness of tone in saying that ’he hoped the book would succeed’:  it deserved to; it was original; but the originality might tell against it.  All would depend upon a favourable launching of such a book.  ‘Mrs. Warwick?  Mrs. Warwick?’ said the most influential of editors, Mr. Marcus Tonans; ’what! that singularly handsome woman? . .  The Dannisburgh affair? . . .  She’s Whitmonby’s heroine.  If she writes as cleverly as she talks, her work is worth trumpeting.’  He promised to see that it went into good hands for the review, and a prompt review—­an essential point; none of your long digestions of the contents.