She covered her face with her hands, striving to shut out the dread picture imagination conjured for her. She, like the Comet, was playing a lone hand, but the stakes were worth the hazard! At that thought her momentary weakness dropped from her like a cloak and she straightened, her eyes aflame with resolution. She would win, she must!
Disrobing in the dark, she lay for long listening intently, but no sound reached her from below, and the strained effort brought its own reaction of fatigue. She slept at last, to awaken only when the sunlight of broad day streamed through the uncurtained window and flooded her face.
There was no hint of the previous night's quarrel in the genial camaraderie of Mrs. Atterbury's attitude toward Wolvert, but Betty fancied that Madame Cimmino regarded them both with ill-concealed anxiety and the girl was glad to escape to the seclusion of the library.
The morning's correspondence awaited her, and she opened the first letter in listless abstraction, her thoughts still centered on the implacable words she had overheard. One glance at the sheet of note-paper in her hand, however, and everything else was banished from her mind.
"My dear Marcia:
"Professor Blythe has caught pneumonia in Chicago. Doctor's consultation held over him on Monday. Too old for recovery, Hamilton says is verdict. Much grieved but still hope. McCormick has been getting orders which evidence strong market. New machinery no trouble to operate. Marked Mary's improved letters; she has seized her opportunity. Hear from out west that John Cote won appeal. Sanitarium being planned for consumptives here. Good air but nothing can be doing if Mayor refuses permit. Please communicate in care Trust Company. Give nobody business confidence but me. They lie who say low prices ruin business. It is dead if the end of the superfluous stock is not sold out regardless of cost.
"With kindest regards,
"Yours,
"Shirley."
With a curious set smile Betty read and reread the missive, then laid it aside, and sat for some minutes staring out of the window. The hidden message was pregnant with meaning and a shade of anxiety crossed her face. The man whom she had seen loitering under the lamp-post just outside the gates a few days before loomed up as a possibility more to be dreaded than any present contingency within the house and she felt that she was being irresistibly carried forward in a chain of events forged by circumstance which she could not break if she would.
When Mrs. Atterbury came to her, Betty watched surreptitiously for her reception of the cipher letter and saw that after a quick glance her employer thrust it without a perusal into her belt. The girl marveled anew at her stoicism; she must at least have gleaned the purport of the first sentence, yet her eyes were as clear and her voice as steady as though it had been the most casual of communications.