Arlington placed the papers in her eager hands.
"They're all folded with your reviews uppermost."
"Oh, thank you ever so much!"
But in the act of opening the bundle, Joan hesitated and let it fall
into her lap.
"There's nothing about--?" she questioned fearfully.
"No, and won't be," he promised. "Besides, these were already on the
presses by the time it happened.... You needn't worry," he resumed,
moving to a window and looking abstractedly out, hands clasped behind
him; "the affair will be kept perfectly quiet. Everybody's been seen
and fixed, except the Cardrow, and the doctor has already given us a
certificate of death under the knife--operation for appendicitis,
imperatively required at an hour's notice.... By the way, I don't
suppose you know, but--Marbridge didn't leave any papers or anything of
that sort lying round here, did he?"
There was no answer. He heard a paper rustle, and looking round saw the
girl with her attention all absorbed by one of her notices.
"Well," he said after a moment, "I'll go and have a talk with that maid,
Sara."
"All right," she returned abstractedly.
"You're all ready to leave when I've fixed things up with her?"
"Yes," she returned, without looking up.
He hesitated a moment by the door, remarking the flush of colour that
was deepening in her cheeks; then with a mystified shake of his head, he
left the room very quietly.
She remained alone for upwards of half an hour, in the course of which
time she read all the reviews once and some of the more enthusiastic
twice.
Then carefully folding the papers, she put them aside and sat thinking.
She thought for a long time without moving, her eyes shining as they
looked ahead, out of the stupid and sordid turmoil of yesterday into the
golden promise of tomorrow.
She thought by no means clearly, with a brain confused by praise and
sodden with fatigue; but above the welter of her thoughts, a single
tremendous fact stood out, solid and unshakable, like a mountain
towering about cloud-wrack:
She was a Success.