A door opened, and Sefton came in.
“Have you seen the ‘Onlooker’?” he said—a journal at the time in much favor with the more educated populace. “There is a review in it that would amuse you.”
“Of what?” she asked, listlessly.
“I didn’t notice the name of the book, but it is a poem, and just your sort, I should say. The article is in the ‘Onlooker’s’ best style.”
“Pray let me see it!” she answered, holding out her hand.
“I will read it to you, if I may.”
She did not object. He sat down a little way from her, and read.
He had not gone far before Walter knew, although its name had not occurred as Sefton read, that the book was his own. The discovery enraged him: how had the reviewer got hold of it when he himself had seen no copy except Lufa’s? It was a puzzle he never got at the root of. Probably some one he had offended had contrived to see as much of it, at the printer’s or binder’s, as had enabled him to forestall its appearance with the most stinging, mocking, playfully insolent paper that had ever rejoiced the readers of the “Onlooker.” But he had more to complain of than rudeness, a thing of which I doubt if any reviewer is ever aware. For he soon found that, by the blunder of reviewer or printer, the best of the verses quoted were misquoted, and so rendered worthy of the epithet attached to them. This unpleasant discovery was presently followed by another—that the rudest and most contemptuous personal remark was founded on an ignorant misapprehension of the reviewer’s own; while in ridicule of a mere misprint which happened to carry a comic suggestion on the face of it, the reviewer surpassed himself.
As Sefton read, Lufa laughed often and heartily: the thing was gamesomely, cleverly, almost brilliantly written. Annoyed as he was, Walter did not fail to note, however, that Sefton did not stop to let Lufa laugh, but read quietly on. Suddenly she caught the paper from his hand, for she was as quick as a kitten, saying:
“I must see who the author of the precious book is!”