Nobody's fault

Out in the London Square a dismal November fog mingled with the gathering twilight, and blotted out the trees and the opposite houses.

Mrs. Trelawney’s drawing-room, where the fire burnt clear, and the softly shaded lamps shed a subdued light, was very pleasant by contrast. Mrs. Trelawney herself sat on one side of the fire in a low seat, beside which a small table was drawn up, covered with multi-colored silks for the embroidery she held.

“Are you very busy just now?” she asked presently of a man who sat leaning back in an arm-chair opposite her on the other side of the table.

“Busy? Stevens is never busy,” her husband assured her. He rose lazily from the sofa as he spoke, and sat down on the arm of his wife’s chair. “He sits in his den before a good fire, with a novel in one hand, and the editorial cigar in the other; and that’s what he calls hard work!”

Stevens groaned. “May you never do anything harder! You don’t mention the kind of novel over which I’m usually to be found gnashing my teeth!”

“Poor man! as bored and savage as all that?” Mrs. Trelawney asked, smiling. “But you get a good one sometimes, of course.”

“Once in three months, perhaps. Oh! there are mitigations of misery, I allow. Last night, for instance, I reviewed a book that interested me. It was good; very good,” he added, meditatively.

“A new writer?”

“Yes, or new to me, at least. It was a woman’s book,--not the usual woman’s novel with a capital W, though, Heaven be praised! The writer’s name is Bridget Ruan. I don’t know whether--”

Mrs. Trelawney dropped her needlework with an exclamation. She turned swiftly to her husband, her eyes shining.

“How splendid!” she said softly, a thrill of excitement and triumph in her voice.

“You know her?” Stevens inquired curiously.

“She is my great friend.” Mrs. Trelawney lifted her head proudly as she spoke.

“Why, you know Bridget Ruan, Mr. Stevens!” she exclaimed, a moment later. “She used to stop with me years ago, after we both left school, you know. You were very much interested in her--”

“Not the clever little girl, whose father--”

“Yes!” she cried, interrupting him in her eagerness. “I forgot that you have never met her since. You’ve been away much too long!”

“Really? Strange that I shouldn’t have known, I mean,” he returned, raising himself a little on one elbow to talk. “I remember her perfectly, of course, but her name had escaped me. Well, it’s a clever story, a very clever story. Strong, but delicate too. No screaming--no rant--but it tells. You have seen it, perhaps?

“She was a striking girl,” he went on musingly. “Is she as beautiful as she promised to be?”

Mrs. Trelawney rose, and crossed the room to a cabinet, from which she took a photograph. She put it silently into his hands.

The editor stood up, and moved nearer the light.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment’s scrutiny. “I remember her face. But she has altered. It was a face full of possibilities. Some of them have become realities, I should say. Yes, she is beautiful--_really_ beautiful.”

“Now you’ve raised yourself, if possible, several inches in Helen’s estimation,” her husband said with a laugh.

Mrs. Trelawney made no remark. She took the photograph gently from Stevens, and, re-crossing the room, put it in its place. There was the suggestion of a caress in the little touch with which she settled the frame, before she returned to her seat.

Then she took up her work, and bent over it a moment without speaking.

“I’m so glad,” she said presently,--and as she raised her head, Stevens thought he detected a trace of tears; “and she’ll be so glad you think well of her book. You must meet her again. I will arrange it. She hasn’t forgotten you. Why, it was you who first praised her work, don’t you remember?”