The gentlemen who add to the meagre salaries they earn in Government offices by writing reviews knew her under both her names, for no literary secrets are hid from them.

They praised her novels publicly, and in private yawned over her morality.

Many people, her aunt Lady Hawkesby among them, very strongly disapproved of her novels.

Certain problems, so these ladies maintained, ought to be discussed only in scientific books, labelled "poison" for the safety of the public, and ought never to be discussed at all by young women.

Millicent King, rendered obstinate by these criticisms, plunged deeper and deeper into a kind of mire which, after a time, she began to dislike very much.
She had in reality simple tastes of a domestic kind, and might have been very happy sewing baby clothes if she had married a peaceable man and kept out of literary society.