ase is--placed him all too definitely; but
it shrank to obscurity in the account of sales eventually rendered. It
was in short an exquisite thing, but it was scarcely a thing to have
published and certainly not a thing to have married on. I heard all
about the matter, for my intervention had much exposed me. Mrs. Highmore
said the second volume had given her ideas, and the ideas are probably
to be found in some of her works, to the circulation of which they have
even perhaps contributed. This was not absolutely yet the very thing she
wanted to do, but it was on the way to it. So much, she informed me,
she particularly perceived in the light of a critical study which I put
forth in a little magazine; which the publisher in his advertisements
quoted from profusely; and as to which there sprang up some absurd story
that Limbert himself had written it. I remember that on my asking some
one why such an idiotic thing had been said my interlocutor replied:
"Oh, because, you know, it's just the way he _would_ have written!" My
spirit sank a little perhaps as I reflected that with such analogies in
our manner there might prove to be some in our fate.

It was during the next four or five years that our eyes were open to
what, unless something could be done, that fate, at least on Limbert's
part, might be. The thing to be done was of course to write the book,
the book that would make the difference, really justify the burden he
had accepted and consummately express his power. For the works that
followed upon _The Major Key_ he had inevitably to accept conditions the
reverse of brilliant, at a time too when the strain upon his resources
had begun to show sharpness. With three babies in due course, an ailing
wife and a complication still greater than these, it became highly
important that a man should do only his best. Whatever Limbert did was
his best; so at least each time I thought and so I unfailingly said
somewhere, though it was not my saying it, heaven knows, that made the
desired difference. Every one else indeed said it, and there was among
multiplied worries always the comfort that his position was quite
assured. The two books that followed _The Major Key_ did more than
anything else to assure it, and Jane Highmore was always crying out:
"You stand alone, dear Ray; you stand absolutely alone!" Dear Ray
used to tell me that he felt the truth of this in feebly attempted
discussions with his bookseller. His sister-in-law gave