As for Mrs. Rivers, he had met her at lunch and gathered from her with no difficulty that she was thinking of writing a novel about her cruise up the sss. Thinking that a first novel by a good-looking clever woman might be well worth a gamble, he had asked her to lunch with him, listened with courteously veiled want of interest to all she had to say about herself, written at frequent intervals to inquire how her work was getting on, and within a few weeks had given her a contract for her first novel with an option on two more. His gamble had been a complete success. Mrs. Rivers, as he had told Lady Pomfret, had a gift amounting to genius for writing books which, as his American partner observed, got the middle-aged women right where they lived. Mrs. Rivers had produced a book a year, her r
