The idea
of the country house in Devonshire excluded Elfrida, and
it was an exclusion Janet could be happy in conscientiously,
since Elfrida did not care.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Even in view of her popular magazine articles and her
literary name Janet's novel was a surprising success.
There is no reason why we should follow the example of
all the London critics except Elfrida Bell, and go into
the detail of its slender story, and its fairly original,
broadly human qualities of treatment, to explain this;
the fact will, perhaps, be accepted without demonstration.
It was a common phrase among the reviewers--though Messrs.
Lash and Black carefully cut it out of their selections
for advertisement--that the book with all its merits was
in no way remarkable; and the publishers were as much
astonished as anybody else when the first edition was
exhausted in three weeks. Yet the agreeable fact remained
that the reviewers gave it the amount of space usually
assigned to books allowed to be remarkable, and that the
_Athenian_ announced the second edition to be had "at
all book-sellers'" on a certain Monday. "When they say
it is not remarkable," wrote Kendal to Janet, "they mean
that it is not heroic, and that it is published in one
volume, at six shillings.
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