"'Much pleasure--the first printed copy--three more to follow--sure to
make a sensation'--hateful wretch!--'if your ladyship will let us
know how many presentation copies--' Goodness!--not
one!
Oh--well!--Madeleine, perhaps--and, of course, Mr. Darrell."
She opened a little despatch-box in which she kept her letters, and
slipped the book in.
"I won't show it to William to-night--not--not till next week." The book
was to be out on the 20th, a week ahead--three months from the day when
she had given the MS. into Darrell's hands. She had been spared all the
trouble of correcting proofs, which had been done for her by the
publisher's reader, on the plea of her illness. She had received and
destroyed various letters from him--almost without reading them--during
a short absence of William's in the north.
Suddenly a start of terror ran through her. "No, no!" she said,
wrestling with herself--"he'll scold me, perhaps--at first; of course I
know he'll do that. And then, I'll make him laugh! He can't--he can't
help laughing. I
know it'll amuse him. He'll see how I meant it, too.
And nobody need ever find out.
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