She was living far enough from London to be easily persuaded, without much vanity, that her name was upon everybody's lips there.

She read the reviews, but with a sick heart, and the words were forgotten as soon as she put them away; but the Riversborough papers, which had been very guarded in their statements about the death of Acton and the events at the Old Bank, took up the book with what appeared to her fulsome and offensive enthusiasm.

It had never occurred to her that local criticism was certain to follow the appearance of a local writer; and she shrank from it with morbid and exaggerated disgust.

Even if all had been well, if Roland had been beside her, their notices would have been well-nigh intolerable to her.

She could not have endured being stared at and pointed out in the streets of her own little town.