me. It seemed to have escaped him; he
had never referred to her in that way before--which was
a wonder, Janet assured herself, considering how constantly
he heard it from her lips.

"How does the novel come on?" Mr. Cardiff asked before
she went to bed that night. "When am I to be allowed to
see the proofs?"

"I finished the nineteenth chapter yesterday," Janet
answered, flushing. "It will only run to about twenty-three.
It's a very little one, daddy."

"Still nobody in the secret but Lash and Black?"

"Not a soul I hope they're the right people," Janet said
anxiously. "I haven't even told Elfrida," she added. "I
want to surprise her with an early copy. She'll like it,
I think. I like it pretty well myself. It has an effective
leading idea."

Her father laughed, and threw her a line of Horace which
she did not understand. "Don't let it take too much time
from your other work," he warned her. "It's sure, you
know, to be an arrant imitation of somebody, while in
your other things you have never been anybody but yourself."
He looked at her in a way that disarmed his words, and
went back to his _Revue Bleue_.

"Dear old thing! You want to prepare me for anything,
don't you? I wonder whom I've imitated! Hardy, I think,
most of all--but then it's such a ludicrously far-away
imitation! If there's nothing in the thing but _that_,
it deserves to fall as flat as flat. But there is,
daddy!"

Cardiff laid down his journal again at the appealing
note.

"No!" she cried, "I won't bore you with it now; wait till
the proofs come. Good-night!" She kissed him lightly on
the cheek. "About Elfrida," she added, still bending
over him. "You'll be very careful, won't you, daddy
dear--not to hurt her feelings in any way, I mean?"

After she had gone, Lawrence Cardiff laid down the _Revue_
again and smoked meditatively for half an hour. During
that time he revolved at least five subjects which he
thought Elfrida, with proper supervision, might treat
effectively. But the supervision would be very necessary.

A fortnight later Mr. Cardiff sat in the same chair,
smoking the same pipe, and alternately frowned and smiled
upon the result of that evening's meditation. It had
reached him by post in the afternoon without an accompanying
word; the exquisite self-conscious manuscript seemed to
breathe a subdued defiance at him, with the merest ghost
of a perfume that Cardiff liked better. Once or twice he
held the pages closer to his f