When not expatiating upon the heroine whom the exigencies of "serial rights" demanded in his books, Charles Langholm, the talker and the man, was an unmuzzled misogynist.

But nobody would have suspected it from his answers to Rachel's questions, or from any portion of their animated conversation.

Certainly the aquiline lady whom Langholm had taken in, and to whom he was only attentive by remorseful fits and penitential starts, had not that satisfaction; for her right-hand neighbor did not speak to her at all.

There was thus one close and critical follower of a conversation which without warning took the one dramatic turn for which Rachel was forever on her guard; only this once, in an hour of unexpected entertainment, was she not.
"How do I get my plots ?" said Langholm.

"Sometimes out of my head, as they say in the nursery; occasionally from real life; more often a blend of the two combined.