She smiled and patted his cheek. "A compliment," she said. "How prettily you can pay them when you like, Bish. But tell me, why are you breaking faith with the Archdeacon, now?"
He told her, then, of her father's resolution to avow his authorship of "Trixie." He told her how (finding himself incapable of producing any sort of fiction) he had got another novel out of the Archdeacon in exchange for his promise to avow his non-authorship of "Trixie." In fact, he told her all about it.
"But, as you can see for yourself, old pill," he concluded, "it's of the utmost importance that nothing should transpire until this new book, this 'Edgar and Lilian,' shall have been on the market for a few months. Launched as my work, it will sell of itself and run straight off into quarter-million figures. Then, d'ye see?
