"No, thank you, Sir Edmund. I've brought off my big coup, and anything more in the newspaper line would be, I fear, an anticlimax. Besides, I want to play with my fifteen hundred pounds."
"What shall you do now?"
"Go back to the house which has the honour of being my home, change my clothes, hurry breathlessly to South Audley Street, and inform Lady Henry that her costume can't be found. She will then, in desperation, decide to send a note to The Daily Beacon, which, my prophetic soul whispers, she will order me to take."
"Shall you go?"
"Out of the house, yes--never, never to return, for my work there is done. But not to the office of The Beacon. Lady Henry's box shall be sent to her by parcel post to-morrow morning, and Mrs. Randall's cheque will be in the coat pocket. That will surprise her a little, but it won't matter to me; for, after having called here for my cheque, I think I'll take the two o'clock train for the Continent. I shall have plenty of money to enjoy myself, and I feel I need a change of air."
"You are wonderful!" repeated Sir Edmund Foster.
[CHAPTER XI--Kismet and a V.C.]
"Now, where on earth have I seen that girl before?" Joan Carthew asked herself.
It was at Biarritz, where she was enjoying, as she put it to herself, a well-earned holiday; and she was known at her hotel, and among the few acquaintances she had made, as the Comtesse de Merival, a young widow with plenty of money. She was a Comtesse because it is easy to say that one has married a sprig of foreign nobility, without being found out; she was a widow because it is possible for a widow to be alone, unchaperoned, and to amuse herself without ceasing to be comme il faut.
Joan had amused herself a great deal during the six weeks since she had left England, and the cream of the amusement had consisted in inventing a romantic story about herself and getting it believed. It was as good as acting in a successful play which one has written for oneself.