"I know what you're thinking of," he said, with an arresting tenderness in his deep voice. "You won't have to wait much longer."
"Is it at the printer's?"
"It's printed."
Barbara and I gave each a little start—we looked at Jaffery, who was taking no notice of us, and then questioningly at each other. What on earth did the man mean?
"From to-morrow onwards, till publication, the press will be flooded with paragraphs about Adrian Boldero's new book. I fixed it up with Wittekind, as a sort of welcome home to you."
"That was very kind, Jaffery," said Doria; "but was it necessary? I mean, couldn't Wittekind have done it before?"
"It was necessary in a way," said Jaffery. "We wanted you to pass the proofs."
Doria smiled proudly. "Pass Adrian's proofs? I? I wouldn't presume to do such a thing."
"Well, here they are, anyway," said Jaffery.
And to the bewilderment of Barbara and myself, he snapped open the hasps of his suit-case and drew out a great thick clump of galley-proofs fastened by a clip at the left hand top corner, which he deposited on Doria's lap. She closed her eyes and her eyelids fluttered as she fingered the precious thing. For a moment we thought she was going to faint. There was breathless silence. Even Susan, who had been left out in the cold, let the black kitten leap from her knee, and aware that something out of the ordinary was happening, fixed her wondering eyes on Doria. Her mother and I wondered even more than Susan, for we had more reason. Of what manuscript, in heaven's name, were these the printed proofs? Was it possible that I had been mistaken and that Jaffery, in the assiduity of love, had made coherence out of Adrian's farrago of despair?