“I wish I could reassure you,” slowly.
“What proofs have you?”
“Isn’t my word enough?”
“Yes, but——”
“You want confirmation. Very well!” Patricia walked to the library table, opened its drawer, and took out the Sun and Herald. As she opened them two paper cuttings and a pair of scissors fell to the floor. She picked them up before DeLaunay could reach her, opening the newspapers, both of which bore signs of mutilation. And while he wondered what she was about to do or say, she resumed calmly, even indifferently. “I had clipped these papers that Aurora might not see them. Since you profess some incredulity, perhaps you’d rather read for yourself.” And she handed them to him.
He adjusted his monocle with trembling fingers, and began reading the slips, his lips moving, his eyes dilated, while Patricia watched him, her eyes masked by her fingers. She saw him read one article through, then scan the other, his lips compressed, his small chin working forward.
“Five million dollars!” he whispered at last. “It is terrible—terrible. And there will be nothing at all.”
“It looks so, doesn’t it?” she replied. “Read on.”
And he read the remainder of it aloud, pausing at each sentence as though fascinated by the horror of it. When he had read the last word, the papers dropped from his fingers upon the tea-table beside him. At a grimace his eye-glass dropped the length of its cord and he stood erect, squaring his shoulders and straightening to his small height with the air of a man who has made a resolution.
“Madame,” he said, more calmly, “this is very disagreeable news.”