"[7] In Catholic world, Volume 68 (1899) it states, "we have received the following notice of an author, Mrs. Miriam Coles Harris, who entered the one true church about two years ago ...

Unlike most American authors, Mrs. Harris has not been a contributor to magazines, having done no writing outside of her novels with the exception of two devotional books written while she was a member of the Anglican Church.

These include "A Playwrights Novitiate" in the Atlantic Monthly (1894), on writing for the stage,[9][Note 3] and another in Lippincott's Magazine (1893), criticizing the undue exaltation of what she called "Seventh Commandment novels".

She falls in love with Rutledge, but misunderstandings and jealousy lead her to behave antagonistically, becoming engaged to a young man with serious emotional problems and a horrible past.

While this furore was going on the mysterious author of "Rutledge", a young girl, Miriam Coles, was living quietly in her home at Oyster Bay and listening gravely to the denials of her family that she had written the book or had anything to do with it.

The secret was well kept until two other books from the same pen had appeared, 'The Sutherlands' and 'Louie's Last Term at St Mary's', and until Miss Coles had married a New York lawyer, Sydney S Harris.

The Italian count wins the girl and her fortune, and finally comes to America to enter the banking business, fully developed in the most mean and despicable of all passions -- avarice.

The upshot is that he makes his wife exquisitely miserable, alienates her two children, and when the separation finally occurs, takes them away from her forever, and she dies of a broken heart.

Whether or not the author intends to emphasize, in this vividly sad picture of a ruined life, the great danger the American girl runs in marrying a foreigner, specially if in so doing she puts all her property in his hands, we do not know.

An added element of tragedy gives its touch of interest in the discovery, too late, by Rachel that she has a heart, and that it beats for a man whom she might have married but for one of those trivial accidents which seem nothing at the time, but which are weapons more effective in the hands of that stern and veiled Anangke who was fabled to stand behind the thrones of even the gods, than the thunderbolts of Jove himself.

Mrs Harris has given the public a touching and significant book, worked out with a nice sense of spiritual portraiture, and made artistically effective by an incisive and agreeable style.

"Her other works include The Sutherlands (1862), Louie's Last Term at St. Mary's (1864), Frank Warrington (1863), Richard Vandermark (1871), Roundhearts, and other Stories (1871), A Perfect Adonis (1880), Missy (1882), Dear Feast of Lent (1883) and The Tents of Wickedness (1909),[18] "Sidney Harris is as prominent and popular in society as in clubdom.

""If I had cherished any romantic hope that this "accomplished gentleman" might prove anything out of which I could make that dearest dream of schoolgirl's heart, a lover, I likewise relinquished that most speedily, for nothing in the person before me, gave encouragement to such an idea.

She was very eccentric, affected sporting tastes, and liked to drive fast horses; but these traits were probably looked upon as the natural accompaniments of genius, and she easily established for herself a good social standing, and in fact was lionized as a literary celebrity.

"Three times during his probation," says Mrs. Harris, "he shook himself clear of their persecution, and trotted around the vast space, and with a wonderful intelligence stopped before the toril door and looked up to the crowd with a wistful appeal to be let out of this brutal field of blood.