He tore open the envelope and read:
"Male twins born to Lady Casselthorpe. Mother and sons doing finely.
"HINKIE."
Mauburn felt the rock foundations of Manhattan Island to be crumbling to dust. For an hour he sat staring at the message. He did not talk to himself once.
Then he hurriedly dressed, took the note and the cablegram, and sought Mrs. Drelmer.
He found that capable lady gowned for the opera. She received his bits of news with the aplomb of a resourceful commander.
"Now, don't go seedy all at once—you've a chance."
"Hang it all, Mrs. Drelmer, I've not. Life isn't worth living—"
"Tut, tut! Death isn't, either!"
"But we'd have been so nicely set up, even without the title, and now Bines, the clumsy ass, has come this infernal cropper, and knocked everything on the head. I say, you know, it's beastly!"