It was past ten o'clock that Sunday evening when Elsie arrived home. Athelstan and George were waiting up for her. 'Again the mysterious appointment?' asked the former. 'Are we to know anything yet?'—Elsie shook her head.—'Not to-night? Very good. You look tired, Elsie.'
'I am tired, thank you. And—and I think I would rather not talk to-night. I will go to my own room.—Have patience, both of you, for a day or two longer. Believe me, everything is going well. The only reason why I cannot tell you what I have been doing is that it is so strange—so wonderful—that I have not been able even to shape it into words in my own mind.—What is to-day? The 1st of August.'
'Only eleven days yet—eleven long days,' said George, 'but also eleven short days.'
'I do not forget. Well—you may both of you sit down—go about your business—you need do nothing more. As for me, I think you will have to get on without me every evening this week. But be quite easy. The thing is done.' And with that, nodding and laughing, she ran out of the room.
'It is done,' repeated George. 'The thing is done. Which thing?'
'It is done,' repeated Athelstan. 'What is done? How was it done? Who did it? When was it done?'
'Since Elsie says it is done, I am bound to accept her assurance. Presumably, she has caught old Checkley at South Square, in the very act. Never mind; I am quite sure that Elsie knows what she says.'
In her own retreat Elsie sat down to consider.
If you think of it, she had a good deal to consider. She had, in fact, a tremendous weapon, an eighty-ton Woolwich, in her possession; a thing which had to be handled so that when it was fired it should not produce a general massacre. All those who had maligned and spoken and thought evil of her brother and her lover should, she thought, be laid prostrate by the mere puff and whiff of the discharge. Checkley should fall backwards, and raise a bump at the back of his head as big as an egg. Sir Samuel and Hilda should be tumbled down in the most ignominious fashion, just as if they had no money at all. And her mother should be forced to cry out that she had been wrong and hasty.
She held in her own hands nothing less than the complete demolition of all this erection of suspicion and malignity. Nothing less. She could restore to her brother that which he had never lost, save in the eyes of his own people, who should have been the most jealous to preserve it. No greater service could be rendered to him. And she could clear from her lover's name whatever shreds and mists had been gathered round it by the industrious breath of Checkley—that humble Cloud Compeller. You see, we all have this much of Zeus in us, even in the compelling of Clouds: every man by the exercise of a little malignity, a little insinuation and a few falsehoods, can raise quite a considerable mist about the head or the name or the figure or the reputation of anyone. Women—some women, that is—are constantly engaged in this occupation; and after they have been at their work, it is sometimes hard for the brightest sunshine to melt those mists away.