So that Lady Carbury when she wrote to her friends, the editors, of her struggles was speaking the truth.

Tidings had reached her of this and the other man's success, and,--coming near to her still,--of this and that other woman's earnings in literature.

And it had seemed to her that, within moderate limits, she might give a wide field to her hopes.

Why should she not add a thousand a year to her income, so that Felix might again live like a gentleman and marry that heiress who, in Lady Carbury's look-out into the future, was destined to make all things straight! Who was so handsome as her son?
Who could make himself more agreeable?
Who had more of that audacity which is the chief thing necessary to the winning of heiresses?
And then he could make his wife Lady Carbury.

If only enough money might be earned to tide over the present evil day, all might be well.
The one most essential obstacle to the chance of success in all this was probably Lady Carbury's conviction that her end was to be obtained not by producing good books, but by inducing certain people to say that her books were good.