For a moment Audrey held it, staring at it incredulously. Then she had won a prize! The first prize, too! Her play had not been utter rubbish, but the best! The best!!
The blood rushed over her face and neck, dyeing both scarlet; her hands trembled, her heart beat suffocatingly. She turned to the letter, but for a moment she could see nothing. Then gradually her sight cleared, and she read: "The Editor of The Girl's World has much pleasure in informing Miss Audrey Carlyle that her play has been adjudged the best of all those sent in; and encloses a cheque for three guineas. The Editor would be glad to have a copy of Miss Carlyle's latest photograph, to print in our next number."
Audrey read no more. With her face glowing with happiness, her red mane flying behind her, she rushed up the stairs to her mother's room. At last she could tell her secret.
Sure of her mother's interest and sympathy she burst into the room with only the faintest apology of a tap at the door. Her father was there too, standing by the bed with a letter in his hand.
"Oh, mother! What do you think!" Audrey's voice broke off suddenly, for her mother's eyes when she looked at her were full of tears.
"Oh, what has happened? Father—mother—what has happened? Not—an accident?"
Her thoughts flew at once to her brothers and sisters. "Not——!" She could not finish the awful question. She turned so white and faint that her father stepped across the room, and taking her in his arms, guided her to a chair by the open window. "No, no, dear, not, thank God, as bad as that. A letter has come from Dr. Norman to say that yesterday granny fainted, and was unconscious a long time. She recovered, but—he wants me to come as soon as possible, he is afraid—her condition may be serious."
"I am never to be allowed any great happiness," said Audrey in her heart. "If something good comes my way, something bad comes with it." Even through her anxiety the thought would come, adding bitterness to her trouble. The letter and cheque she held slipped from her fingers to the floor. She would not even tell her news, she thought bitterly. Perhaps if she showed that she did not care, Fate would find no pleasure in being so cruel to her.
"Do you want me to go too?" she asked. She knew that her voice was hard and unsympathetic, but she felt, at that moment, as though she could not help it.