' No more shall I
take the part he intends me to in this Newport romance, unless he
removes Count Bonetti from the scene entirely, and provides me with a
different style of hero from his Professor, the original of whom, by-
the-way, as I happen to know, is already married and has two
children. I went to school with his wife, and I know just how much
of a hero he is."
And so they went to Newport, and Harley's novel opened swimmingly.
His description of the yacht was perfect; his narration of the
incidents of the embarkation could not be improved upon in any way.
They were absolutely true to the life.
But his account of what Marguerite Andrews said and did and thought
while on the Willards' yacht was not realism at all--it was
imagination of the wildest kind, for she said, did, and thought
nothing of the sort.
Harley did his best, but his heroine was obdurate, and the poor
fellow did not know that he was writing untruths, for he verily
believed that he heard and saw all that he attributed to her exactly
as he put it down.
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