"I have your first book, and its title, and that you are a Southerner. Your girlhood was spent in Kentucky, but you say your family is really a Virginia one. I have you here as passionately fond of horses and hunting, and all that. Am I right in saying that it was your mother who rode through the Northern lines on a Kentucky thoroughbred to save that Confederate captive's life you spoke of? Good; I'll jot down a note of his name here. I think that will make an excellent little story. Then I have the anecdote about Judge Wilder and The Silver Poppy; and I can make a paragraph of your New York success, and about the novel being dramatized. Oh, yes, you would like the social element brought out, of course. There's just one other thing our editor usually asks for—if you don't mind—the age, you know," he added tentatively.
"I am almost twenty-three," answered the woman.
The young Oxonian buried himself in his note-book.
"Yes, twenty-three," he repeated, as he penciled a note of it. He felt, as he wrote, that for some unknown reason she was laughing at him.
"Why have you never written a second book?" he asked her.
"I am writing one," she answered quietly, he thought rather wearily, as the smile faded from her face.
"Then I'd better put that in."
"If you like," she added, as if uninterested. He liked her better for that second touch of diffidence.
"Now there is just one point I'm not clear about. You mentioned the fact that you and Mrs. Spaulding were about to give a series of receptions—er—literary receptions, I think you called them—during the coming season. Pardon my asking, but is Mrs. Spaulding also devoted to the writing of books?"
"Oh, dear me, no!" she answered. "She's only devoted to the people who happen to be doing the writing."