he broke down in
everything else. He had had rheumatic fever in the spring, when the book
was but half finished, and this ordeal in addition to interrupting his
work had enfeebled his powers of resistance and greatly reduced his
vitality. He recovered from the fever and was able to take up the book
again, but the organ of life was pronounced ominously weak and it was
enjoined upon him with some sharpness that he should lend himself to no
worries. It might have struck me as on the cards that his worries would
now be surmountable, for when he began to mend he expressed to me a
conviction almost contagious that he had never yet made so adroit a bid
as in the idea of _The Hidden Heart_. It is grimly droll to reflect that
this superb little composition, the shortest of his novels but perhaps
the loveliest, was planned from the first as an "adventure-story" on
approved lines. It was the way they all did the adventure-story that
he tried most dauntlessly to emulate. I wonder how many readers ever
divined to which of their book-shelves _The Hidden Heart_ was so
exclusively addressed. High medical advice early in the summer had been
quite viciously clear as to the inconvenience that might ensue to him
should he neglect to spend the winter in Egypt. He was not a man to
neglect anything; but Egypt seemed to us all then as unattainable as
a second edition. He finished _The Hidden Heart_ with the energy of
apprehension and desire, for if the book should happen to do what "books
of that class," as the publisher said, sometimes did he might well have
a fund to draw on. As soon as I read the deep and delicate thing I knew,
as I had known in each case before, exactly how well it would do. Poor
Limbert in this long business always figured to me an undiscourageable
parent to whom only girls kept being born. A bouncing boy, a son and
heir was devoutly prayed for and almanacks and old wives consulted; but
the spell was inveterate, incurable, and _The Hidden Heart_ proved, so
to speak, but another female child. When the winter arrived accordingly
Egypt was out of the question. Jane Highmore, to my knowledge, wanted to
lend him money, and there were even greater devotees who did their best
to induce him to lean on them. There was so marked a "movement"
among his friends that a very considerable sum would have been at his
disposal; but his stiffness was invincible: it had its root, I think,
in his sense, on his own side, of sacrifices already m