She made both her delicately shaded eyebrows an even splotchy black, admired the result, then suddenly rubbed it off, turned away from the mirror without a backward glance, and ran down into the hall. The clock was just striking ten.
Judith paused for one breathless minute at the library door, pressing both hands against her heart, then she went into the firelit room and made the last and most important of her preparations. She switched on the lights, toplights and sidelights and reading-lamp, all of them, went to the middle one of the three front windows, crushed the curtains back, and raised both shades high to the top, so that the light in the room looked out at the street from this window from sill to ceiling. Judith slipped quickly out of range of the window, dropped down on one of the cushions by the fire, and waited.
She had fluttered through her little hurry of preparation excitedly, but now there was evidence of deeper excitement about the tense quiet of her, huddled on her cushion, small hands clasping silken knees, and brooding eyes on the fire. There was a dignity about her, too, in spite of her childish pose and a drooping grace that was almost a woman's.
What she was waiting for was slow to come, but she did not seem disturbed by that. The hands of the clock above her seemed to move with the unbelievable quickness characteristic of clock hands when there is no other activity in the room, and she observed them calmly. Soon they pointed to the quarter hour, they passed it. She looked faintly worried then. The telephone rang again; she pressed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes tight, and did not answer. The stick on the fire burned low and she did not replace it. It parted and fell from the andirons with a dull noise that echoed loudly through the empty room. Judith started and jumped up, her eyes hard and bright, her hands tightly clenched.
She eyed the clock threateningly, as if it were personally responsible for whatever disappointment she might be feeling, and she were daring it not to strike. It struck half-past ten in spite of her. Judith's mouth trembled childishly, and tears started to her eyes. They did not fall. Footsteps sounded outside. They turned into the drive. Judith stood on tiptoe and peeped at herself in the mantel mirror--her flushed cheeks, tumbled hair, and sparkling eyes. The steps crossed the porch, and she ran to the door and threw it open--the length of the chain, and no wider. She did not unbar the chain. On the threshold, with a substantial box of Belle Isle under his arm, stood Mr. Willard Nash.