But unluckily this was damning evidence against my optimist view.
He sighed heavily and put down the lists.
"It's no use to deceive one's self," he said, drearily, "'Lynwood' has failed." Something in the deep depression of look and tone gave me a momentary insight into the author's heart.

He thought, I know, of the agony of mind this book had cost him; of those long months of waiting and their deadly struggle, of the hopes which had made all he passed through seem so well worth while; and the bitterness of the disappointment was no doubt intensified by the knowledge that the Major would rejoice over it.
We walked that afternoon along the Bradford Valley, a road which Derrick was specially fond of.

He loved the thickly-wooded hills, and the glimpses of the Avon, which, flanked by the canal and the railway, runs parallel with the high road; he always admired, too, a certain little village with grey stone cottages which lay in this direction, and liked to look at the site of the old hall near the road: nothing remained of it but the tall gate posts and rusty iron gates looking strangely dreary and deserted, and within one could see, between some dark yew trees, an old terrace walk with stone steps and balustrades--the most ghostly-looking place you can conceive.
"I know you'll put this into a book some day," I said, laughing.
"Yes," he said, "it is already beginning to simmer in my brain." Apparently his deep disappointment as to his first venture had in no way affected his perfectly clear consciousness that, come what would, he had to write.
As we walked back to Bath he told me his 'Ruined Hall' story as far as it had yet evolved itself in his brain, and we were still discussing it when in Milsom Street we met a boy crying evening papers, and details of the last great battle at Saspataras Hill.
Derrick broke off hastily, everything but anxiety for Lawrence driven from his mind..