Just then there was a lull in the mad symphony outside, and in the stillness she heard the soft thud of snow-clogged wheels pass by the windows. With a sense of relief, almost painful in its intensity, she ran to the door and flung it open, letting in a great buffet of snow-stifled wind that extinguished the lamps, and left only the misshapen shadows from the fire leaping monstrously on the walls. But instead of the omnibus she had expected, there was only a postman's cart, from which the man had already descended, blanketed in snow, with a telegram in his hand. He had just rung the bell.
Kit ran with it to the fire, and read it by the blaze. It was from Conybeare, sent off from two stations up the line.
"Blocked by snow," it said. "Line will not be clear till to-morrow morning."
A footman had come in answer to the bell. He found the door wide open, the snow blowing dizzily in, and on the hearthrug Kit, in a dead faint.
[CHAPTER II]
THE FIRST DEAL
Mr. Alington was an early riser, and it was barely half-past eight when he finished his plain but excellent breakfast the morning after he had received Jack's telegram about Kit's venture in Carmel East. A certain instinct of perfection was characteristic of him; all his habits of living were of a finished character. He lived plainly, and he would sooner have his simple eggs and bacon off fine china, with alternate mouthfuls of admirably crisp toast and the freshest butter, than have rioted in the feasts of Caligula with a napkin ever so slightly stained. The same snowfall which had blocked the line between Tilehurst and Goring had not spared London, and the streets on this Sunday morning were dumb and heavy with snow. Gangs of men were out at work clearing it away, and streaks and squares of brown, muddy pavement and roadway of contrasted sordidness were being disclosed in the solid whiteness of the street. Mr. Alington, looking from his window, was afraid that these efforts were likely to prove but lost labour, for the sky was still thick and overlaid with that soft, greasy look which portends more snow, and in spite of the hour, it was but an apology for twilight on to which he looked out. This thought was an appreciable pang to him. The street was empty but for the street-clearers, and had attained that degree of discomfort only realized in London after a snowfall. The gaunt, gray-faced houses opposite showed lights twinkling in their windows, and the yellow, unluminous atmosphere was like a jaundiced dream. The palace clock at the bottom of the street was still lit within, but it was no more than a blurred moon through the clogged air.
But Mr. Alington, after his first comprehensive glance, gave but little attention to these atrocities of climate. His reading-lamp shone cheerily on his desk, and on the very satisfactory papers lying there, and Carmel basked in a temperate sunshine. For up till now the ways of the new group had entirely fulfilled his expectations, which from the beginning had been sanguine, and the best, so he hoped, was yet to be. The scheme which he had formed in the summer, and which he had talked over with Jack in September, had been simple, ingenious, and on the safe side of excessive sharpness. The dear, delightful public, as he had foreseen, was quite willing to fall in with his scheme, and had seconded his plans for general enrichment—particularly his own—with openhanded patronage. The scheme in brief was as follows, had the public only known: