I telegraphed to Harper & Brothers to ask them whether it would suit them just as well if I made it into a long novel.

They telegraphed their assent at once; so I went on.

At that time Mr.F.N.Doubleday was a sort of director of Harper's firm.

To him I had told the tale in a railway train, and he had carried me off at once to Henry M.Alden, to whom I also told it, with the result that Harper's Magazine was wide open to it, and there in Quebec, soon after my interview with Mr.Alden and Mr.Doubleday, the book was begun.
The first of the letters published in The House of Harper, however, was apparently written immediately after my return to London when the novel was well on its way.

Evidently the first paragraph of the letter was an apology for having suddenly announced the development of the book from a long short story to a long novel; for I used these words: "Yet if you really take an interest in the working of the human mind in its relation to the vicissitudes of life, you will appreciate what I am going to tell you, and will recognise that there is only stability in evolution which the vulgar call chance....