"You must really change it. Why should a young girl like that run away with a red-headed foreigner? She would never have done it."
"That's the new plan, dear. You can't have your hero too wild or your heroine too ugly; for men as a rule are bad, and women are not all as lovely as you, and it flatters bad men and ugly women to find bad men and ugly women heroes and heroines."
"Well, but I don't care what the new plan is, I wont have that horrid German adventurer marry Lady Clarinda."
"Oh, very well; of course, if you insist upon her marrying Sir Gabriel, she shall; although it will compel me to tear up twelve manuscript sheets worth four shillings a sheet."
"And what is going to happen in the other one when the old Duke of Fenwick dies?"
"Oh, you'd be greatly surprised."
"What?"
"You remember the long, tall, thin man who played the violoncello in the theatre orchestra, early in the story?"
"Yes. With a red nose and warts on his fingers."
"That's he. But I must read that chapter to you the next time I am at Knightsbridge."