"What have they said now, dear?" He missed the tragic resignation in that one word "now."
"Read it," he said and thrust it almost roughly at her, as though blaming the whole world.
It did not seem, however, as though he could wait for her opinion. "Newer," "practically unknown," he fired out at intervals, and other adjectives.
But she heard none of them.
The paper swam before her eyes and every dim word filled her with a sick dread, a resentful wonder, an absolute despair, for this is what she saw:
"AUTHOR'S WIFE FIASCO
"OFFICIAL REVELATIONS
"Suburban tea-tables need buzz no more with questions as to the identity of that now famous Author's Wife whose recent confessions have raised such a pother. A representative of this paper found Mr. Blatchley, this morning, at last in an unbending mood.
"'The secret is out,' said the publisher, 'the author in question is Mr. Hubert Brett. The book, I may add, is naturally by his wife. There were reasons till now why her identity should not be divulged.'
"Those reasons will perhaps be guessed by all who remember the fierce controversy that raged recently and the big names that were thrown about, also the big sales. Whether these last will be helped by this official revelation will remain to be seen. The context had certainly prepared us for the wife-sacrificing author to be some one slightly better known. Mr. Hubert Brett is of the newer school of novelists, whose work is practically unknown to the bigger public. From Who's Who we learn that he has written some fourteen novels since 1899, and of these Wandering Stars is possibly the most familiar to library-readers.