re have been so
many distinguished professional men in the Eustace family and they of
course did not for one minute think a girl like me could do anything
and I did not really think so myself. Sometimes I wonder how I had
the courage to keep on writing when I was so uncertain but it was
exactly as if somebody were driving me. When I had the book finished,
I was so afraid it ought to be typewritten, but I could not manage
that. At least I thought I could not, but after awhile I did, and in
a way that nobody suspected, Aunt Harriet sent me to New York. You
know I am not often allowed to go alone but it was when Grandmother
had the grippe and Aunt Susan the rheumatism and Aunt Harriet had a
number of errands and so I went on the Twenty-third Street ferry, and
did not go far from Twenty-third Street and I took my book in my
handbag and carried it into Larkins and White's and I saw Mr. Larkins
in his office and he was very kind and polite, although I think now
he was laughing a little to himself at the idea of my writing a book,
but he said to leave the MSS. and he would let me hear. And I left it
and, oh, Margaret, I heard within a week, and he said such lovely
things about it. You know I always go to the post-office, so there
was no chance of anybody's finding it out that way. And then the
proof began to come and I was at my wits' end to conceal that, but I
did. And then the book was published, and, Margaret, you know the
rest. Nobody dreams who wrote it, and I have had a statement and oh,
my dear, next November I am to have a check." (Annie leaned over and
whispered in Margaret's ear.) "Only think," she said with a burst of
rapture.

Margaret was quite pale. She sat looking straight before her with a
strange expression. She was tasting in the very depths of her soul a
bitterness which was more biting than any bitter herb which ever grew
on earth. It was a bitterness, which, thank God, is unknown to many;
the bitterness of the envy of an incapable, but self-seeking nature,
of one with the burning ambition of genius but destitute of the
divine fire. To such come unholy torture, which is unspeakable at the
knowledge of another's success. Margaret Edes was inwardly writhing.
To think that Annie Eustace, little Annie Eustace, who had worshipped
at her own shrine, whom she had regarded with a lazy, scarcely
concealed contempt, for her incredible lack of wordly knowledge, her
provincialism, her ill-fitting attire, should have