"No alien hand perceptible. Ho! ho! ho! But it's stunning, isn't it? I do believe the old fraud of a book is going to win through. This ought to satisfy Doria, don't you think so?"
"It ought to," said Barbara. "I'll send it up to her room."
But Doria with Adrian's impeccability on the brain—and how could a work of Adrian's be impeccable when an alien hand, however imperceptible, had touched it?—was not satisfied. Towards noon, when she came downstairs, she met Jaffery on the terrace, with a familiar little knitting of the brow before which his welcoming smile faded.
"It's all right up to a point," she said, handing him back the letter. "Nobody with the rudiments of a brain could fail to recognise the merits of Adrian's work. But no novelist is possessed of the critical faculty."
"Then why," asked Jaffery, after the way of men, "did you ask me to send him the novel?"
"I took it for granted he had common sense," replied Doria, after the way of women.
"And he hasn't any?"
"Read the thing again."
Jaffery scanned the page mechanically and looked up: "Well, what's to be done now?"
"I should like to compare the proofs with Adrian's original manuscript. Where is it?"