the announcement of the true authorship of 'Illusion'
brought him nothing short of disaster, social and financial. It
produced a temporary demand for 'Sweet Bells Jangled' at the
libraries, but now that things had been explained to them, the most
unlikely persons were able to distinguish the marked inferiority of
the later book.

Those reviews which had waited at first from press of matter or
timidity now condemned it unanimously, and several editors of
periodicals who had requested works from Mark's pen wrote to say that,
as the offer had been made under a misapprehension, he would
understand that they felt compelled to retract the commissions.

Mark's career as a novelist was ended, he had less chance than ever of
getting a publisher's reader to look at his manuscript, the affair had
associated his name with ridicule instead of the scandal which is a
marketable commodity, and might have launched him again; his name upon
a book now would only predestine it to obscurity.

Mabel was made aware in countless little ways of her husband's descent
in popular estimation; he was no longer forced into a central
position in any gathering they happened to form part of, but stood
forlornly in corners, like the rest of humanity. Perhaps he regretted
even the sham celebrity he had enjoyed, for his was a disposition that
rose to any opportunity of self-display--but in time the contrast
ceased to mortify him, for most of the invitations dropped; he was
only asked to places now as the husband of Mabel, and in the height of
the season most of their evenings were passed at home, to the perfect
contentment of both, however.

Mrs. Featherstone had given up her theatricals, in spite of Vincent's
attempt to dissuade her; she had lost some of the principal members of
her little company, and it was too late to recruit them; but her chief
reason was a feeling that she would only escape ridicule very narrowly
as it was, and that the safest course was to allow her own connection
with the affair to be forgotten as speedily as possible.

But she could not forgive Mark, and would have dropped the
acquaintance altogether, if Gilda had not, in the revival of her
affection for Mabel, done all in her power to keep it alive.

Mr. Langton, deeply as he had resented the misrepresentation which had
cost him his daughter, was not a man to do anything which might give
any opening for gossip; he repressed his wife's tendency to become
elegiac on her daug