The Butterfly House Part 22

"Sit down," said Annie, laughing. "I thought the time had come to tell you and I hoped you would be pleased. It is lovely, isn't it?

You know it is selling wonderfully."

"It is lovely," said Von Rosen. "It would have been lovely anyway, but your success is a mighty sweet morsel for me."

"You had better go back to your chair and smoke and I will read to you," said Annie.

"Just as if you had not written a successful novel," said Von Rosen.

 

But he obeyed, the more readily because he knew, and pride and reverence for his wife fairly dazed him. Von Rosen had been more acute than the critics and Annie had written at high pressure, and one can go over a book a thousand times and be blind to things which should be seen. She had repeated one little sentence which she had written in _The Poor Lady_. Von Rosen knew, but he never told her that he knew. He bowed before her great, generous silence as he would have bowed before a shrine, but he knew that she had written _The Poor Lady_, and had allowed Margaret Edes to claim unquestioned the honour of her work.

As they sat there, Annie's Aunt Susan came in and sat with them. She talked a good deal about the wedding presents. Wedding presents were very wonderful to her. They were still spread out, most of them on tables in the parlour because all Fairbridge was interested in viewing them. After a while Susan went into the parlour and gloated over the presents. When she came back, she wore a slightly disgusted expression.

"You have beautiful presents," said she, "but I have been looking all around and the presents are not all on those tables, are they?"

"No," said Annie.

Von Rosen laughed. He knew what was coming, or thought that he did.

"I see," said Aunt Susan, "that you have forty-two copies of Margaret Edes' book, _The Poor Lady_, and I have always thought it was a very silly book, and you can't exchange them for every single one is autographed."

It was quite true. Poor Margaret Edes had autographed the forty-two.

She had not even dreamed of the incalculable depths of a lie.

THE END