16
THE AUTHOR OF "TRIXIE"
father and husband, had listened to the voice of the inward tempter and was now, poor wretch, no better than a secret novelist.
Worse.
Since he could not conceal from his wife and daughters the fact that he was spending several hours each day behind the locked door of his study, and since he realised that they must be curious as to what the business might be which so steadily occupied him, he gave out to them that he was engaged upon a careful revision of his Lactantius, preliminary to producing a second edition of that work. In other words, he lied to them in the most barefaced and detestable fashion.
(4)
This is a miserable beginning to what you hoped was to be a pleasant story;
