“Oh—you are Mrs. Puffle,” said Brown, after a short but perhaps insufficient pause. “You are Charles Puffle’s wife?”
“Do you know Charles?” asked the lady, putting up both her little hands. “We don’t want him to hear anything about this. You haven’t told him?”
“I’ve told him nothing as yet,” said Mr. Brown.
“Pray don’t. It’s a secret. Of course he’ll know it some day. Oh, Mr. Brown, you won’t betray us. How very odd that you should know Charles!”
“Does he smoke as much as ever, Mrs. Puffle?”
“How very odd that he never should have mentioned it! Is it at his office that you see him?”
“Well, no; not at his office. How is it that he manages to get away on an afternoon as he does?”
“It’s very seldom—only two or three times in a month—when he really has a headache from sitting at his work. Dear me, how odd! I thought he told me everything, and he never mentioned your name.”
“You needn’t mention mine, Mrs. Puffle, and the secret shall be kept. But you haven’t told me about the smoking. Is he as inveterate as ever?”
“Of course he smokes. They all smoke. I suppose then he used always to be doing it before he married. I don’t think men ever tell the real truth about things, though girls always tell everything.”
“And now about your sister’s novel?” asked Mr. Brown, who felt that he had mystified the little woman sufficiently about her husband.
“Well, yes. She does want to get some money so badly! And it is clever;—isn’t it? I don’t think I ever read anything cleverer. Isn’t it enough to take your breath away when Orlando defends himself before the lords?” This referred to a very high flown passage which Mr. Brown had determined to cut out when he was thinking of printing the story for the pages of the Olympus. “And she will be so brokenhearted! I hope you are not angry with her because she wrote in that way.”
“Not in the least. I liked her letters. She wrote what she really thought.”
“That is so good of you! I told her that I was sure you were good-natured, because you answered so civilly. It was a kind of experiment of hers, you know.”
“Oh—an experiment!”
“It is so hard to get at people. Isn’t it? If she’d just written, ‘Dear Sir, I send you a manuscript,’—you never would have looked at it:—would you?”
“We read everything, Mrs. Puffle.”
“But the turn for all the things comes so slowly; doesn’t it? So Polly thought—”
“Polly—what did Polly think?”
“I mean Josephine. We call her Polly just as a nickname. She was so anxious to get you to read it at once! And now what must we do?” Mr. Brown sat silent awhile, thinking. Why did they call Josephine de Montmorenci Polly? But there was the fact of the MS., let the name of the author be what it might. On one thing he was determined. He would take no steps till he had himself seen the lady who wrote the novel. “You’ll go to the gentlemen in Paternoster Row immediately; won’t you?” asked Mrs. Puffle, with a pretty little beseeching look which it was very hard to resist.
“I think I must ask to see the authoress first,” said Mr. Brown.
“Won’t I do?” asked Mrs. Puffle. “Josephine is so particular. I mean she dislikes so very much to talk about her own writings and her own works.” Mr. Brown thought of the tenor of the letters which he had received, and found that he could not reconcile with it this character which was given to him of Miss de Montmorenci. “She has an idea,” continued Mrs. Puffle, “that genius should not show itself publicly. Of course, she does not say that herself. And she does not think herself to be a genius;—though I think it. And she is a genius. There are things in ‘Not so Black as he’s Painted’ which nobody but Polly could have written.”
Nevertheless Mr. Brown was firm. He explained that he could not possibly treat with Messrs. X., Y., and Z.—if any treating should become possible—without direct authority from the principal. He must have from Miss de Montmorenci’s mouth what might be the arrangements to which she would accede. If this could not be done he must wash his hands of the affair. He did not doubt, he said, but that Miss de Montmorenci might do quite as well with the publishers by herself, as she could with any aid from him. Perhaps it would be better that she should see Mr. X. herself. But if he, Brown, was to be honoured by any delegated authority, he must see the author. In saying this he implied that he had not the slightest desire to interfere further, and that he had no wish to press himself on the lady. Mrs. Puffle, with just a tear, and then a smile, and then a little coaxing twist of her lips, assured him that their only hope was in him. She would carry his message to Josephine, and he should have a further letter from that lady. “And you won’t tell Charles that I have been here,” said Mrs. Puffle as she took her leave.
“Certainly not. I won’t say a word of it.”
“It is so odd that you should have known him.”
“Don’t let him smoke too much, Mrs. Puffle.”
“I don’t intend. I’ve brought him down to one cigar and a pipe
