The rector's face grew pale as the
corpse in the casket; the withered cheek of the Baroness turned a
sickly yellow, and a spark of anger dried the moisture in her eyes.
Before the night had settled over the thriving city of Beryngford,
the Baroness dropped a point of virus from the lancet of her tongue
to poison the social atmosphere where Joy Irving had by the merest
accident of fate made her new home, and where in the office of
organist she had, without dreaming of her dramatic situation, played
the requiem at the funeral of her own father.
CHAPTER XVIII
Joy Irving had come to Beryngford at the time when the discoveries of
the quarries caused that village to spring into sudden prominence as
a growing city. Newspaper accounts of the building of the new
church, and the purchase of a large pipe organ, chanced to fall under
her eye just as she was planning to leave the scene of her
unhappiness.
"I can at least only fail if I try for the position of organist
there," she said, "and if I succeed in this interior town, I can hide
myself from all the world without incurring heavy expense."
So all unconsciously Joy fled from the metropolis to the very place
from which her mother had vanished twenty-two years before.
She had been the organist in the grand new Episcopalian Church now
for three years; and she had made many cordial acquaintances who
would have become near friends, if she had encouraged them.
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