Joan Thursday Part 71

"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 s.h.i.+ning 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.