He was wont to say, "Should the secret be found out, Fiona dies," and in a letter to Mrs. Thomas A. Janviershe and her husband being among the earliest confidants of his secrethe makes this interesting statement: "I can write out of my heart in a way I could not do as William Sharp, and indeed I could not do so if I were the woman Fiona Macleod is supposed to be, unless veiled in scrupulous anonymity....

Why Mary Lamb preserved such strict anonymity we do not now know; but it was probably from a natural shrinking from any kind of publicity after the unhappy publicity which she had once gained by her misfortune.