Marian drew a breath, but remained for a moment with her eyes cast down.
‘Do go on, dear,’ urged Dora. ‘Whatever are you going to tell us?’
‘There’s a notice of father’s book,’ continued the other, ‘a very ill-natured one; it’s written by the editor, Mr Fadge. Father and he have been very unfriendly for a long time. Perhaps Mr Milvain has told you something about it?’
Dora replied that he had.
‘I don’t know how it is in other professions,’ Marian resumed, ‘but I hope there is less envy, hatred and malice than in this of ours. The name of literature is often made hateful to me by the things I hear and read. My father has never been very fortunate, and many things have happened to make him bitter against the men who succeed; he has often quarrelled with people who were at first his friends, but never so seriously with anyone as with Mr Fadge. His feeling of enmity goes so far that it includes even those who are in any way associated with Mr Fadge. I am sorry to say’—she looked with painful anxiety from one to the other of her hearers—‘this has turned him against your brother, and—’
Her voice was checked by agitation.
‘We were afraid of this,’ said Dora, in a tone of sympathy.
‘Jasper feared it might be the case,’ added Maud, more coldly, though with friendliness.
‘Why I speak of it at all,’ Marian hastened to say, ‘is because I am so afraid it should make a difference between yourselves and me.’
‘Oh! don’t think that!’ Dora exclaimed.