"I am sure of it. That grand idea of yours was like a star in a hazy sky. We have cleared away the fog."
Lady Mabel sighed. "To me the meaning of the whole passage seemed so obvious," she said.
"Because it was your own thought. A mother knows her own children however they are dressed."
This second tea-drinking was a very serious affair. Lord Mallow went at the poem like a professional reviewer, and criticised without mercy, yet contrived not to wound the author's vanity.
"It is because you have real genius that I venture to be brutally candid," he said, when, by those slap-dash pencil-marks of his—always with the author's consent—he had reduced the "Tragedy of the Sceptic Soul" to about one-third of its original length. "I was carried away yesterday by my first impressions; to-day I am coldly critical. I have set my heart upon your poem making a great success."
This last sentence, freely translated, might be taken to mean: "I should not like such an elegant young woman to make an utter fool of herself."
Mr. Vawdrey came in while critic and poet were at work, and was told what they were doing. He evinced no unworthy jealousy, but seemed glad that Lord Mallow should be so useful.
"It's a very fine poem," he said, "but there's too much metaphysics in it. I told Mabel so the other day. She must alter a good deal of it if she wants to be understanded of the people."
"My dear Roderick, my poem is metaphysical or it is nothing," Mabel answered pettishly.
She could bear criticism from Lord Mallow better than criticism from Roderick. After this it became an established custom for Lord Mallow to drop in every day to inspect the progress of Lady Mabel's poems in the course of their preparation for the press. The business part of the matter had been delegated to him, as much more au fait in such things than homely rustic Rorie. He chose the publisher and arranged the size of the volume, type, binding, initials, tail-pieces, every detail. The paper was to be thick and creamy, the type mediaeval, the borders were to be printed in carmine, the initials and tail-pieces specially drawn and engraved, and as quaint as the wood-cuts in an old edition of "Le Lutrin." The book was to have red edges, and a smooth gray linen binding with silver lettering. It was to be altogether a gem of typographic art, worthy of Firmin Didot.