“You would want Tessa, too,” said Dinah.
“Would I?” he returned, squeezing the gloved fingers on his arm, whereupon Dinah became confused and silent.
Tessa found her books upon the hall table; her father, Mr. Hammerton, and Dinah followed her into the hall to watch her face and laugh over her exclamations.
“Your secret is out,” cried her father; “at Christmas there will be a placard in Runyon’s with the name of the book and author in flaming red letters! You can not remain the Great Unknown.”
“I feel so ashamed of trying,” said Tessa, with a brown cover, a red cover, and a green cover in her hands, “but I had to. I’ll be too humble to be ashamed. ‘Humility’s so good when pride’s impossible.’”
Several copies were taken up-stairs; Miss Jewett’s name was written in one, Mrs. Towne’s in another, Mr. Hammerton’s in one that he had selected, and in one, bound in a sober gray, she wrote,
“Felix Harrison. In memory of the old school days when he helped me with my compositions.
“T. L. W.”
She never knew of his sudden, sharp cry over it: “Oh, my life! my lost life! my wasted life!”