“You see!” Mrs. Fetherel triumphed.

“Well—­weren’t you prepared for the Bishop?”

“Not now—­at least, I hadn’t thought of his seeing the clippings.”

“And why should he see them?”

“Bella—­won’t you understand?  It’s John.”

“John?”

“Who has taken the most unexpected tone—­one might almost say out of perversity.”

“Oh, perversity—­” Mrs. Clinch murmured, observing her cousin between lids wrinkled by amusement.  “What tone has John taken?”

Mrs. Fetherel threw out her answer with the desperate gesture of a woman who lays bare the traces of a marital fist.  “The tone of being proud of my book.”

The measure of Mrs. Clinch’s enjoyment overflowed in laughter.

“Oh, you may laugh,” Mrs. Fetherel insisted, “but it’s no joke to me.  In the first place, John’s liking the book is so—­so—­such a false note—­it puts me in such a ridiculous position; and then it has set him watching for the reviews—­who would ever have suspected John of knowing that books were reviewed? Why, he’s actually found out about the Clipping Bureau, and whenever the postman rings I hear John rush out of the library to see if there are any yellow envelopes.  Of course, when they do come he’ll bring them into the drawing-room and read them aloud to everybody who happens to be here—­and the Bishop is sure to happen to be here!”

Mrs. Clinch repressed her amusement.  “The picture you draw is a lurid one,” she conceded, “but your modesty strikes me as abnormal, especially in an author.  The chances are that some of the clippings will be rather pleasant reading.  The critics are not all union men.”

Mrs. Fetherel stared.  “Union men?”

“Well, I mean they don’t all belong to the well-known Society-for-the-Persecution-of-Rising-Authors.  Some of them have even been known to defy its regulations and say a good word for a new writer.”

“Oh, I dare say,” said Mrs. Fetherel, with the laugh her cousin’s epigram exacted.  “But you don’t quite see my point.  I’m not at all nervous about the success of my book—­my publisher tells me I have no need to be—­but I am afraid of its being a succes de scandale.”

“Mercy!” said Mrs. Clinch, sitting up.

The butler and footman at this moment appeared with the tea-tray, and when they had withdrawn, Mrs. Fetherel, bending her brightly rippled head above the kettle, continued in a murmur of avowal, “The title, even, is a kind of challenge.”

“‘Fast and Loose,’” Mrs. Clinch mused.  “Yes, it ought to take.”

“I didn’t choose it for that reason!” the author protested.  “I should have preferred something quieter—­less pronounced; but I was determined not to shirk the responsibility of what I had written.  I want people to know beforehand exactly what kind of book they are buying.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Clinch, “that’s a degree of conscientiousness that I’ve never met with before.  So few books fulfil the promise of their titles that experienced readers never expect the fare to come up to the menu.”