Save that it grew perhaps the fraction of a shade paler, Berry’s face changed not one whit.
She flung away her cigarette and fumbled for a moment among the folds of her skirt, then her unsteady hand drew a packet of paper from her pocket, loosened the bit of string that held it together, and flirted off two documents from the top.
“There’s her baptismal certificate, for one, and my marriage lines, for another,” she said, “and here’s one of Adrian’s letters to me acknowledging that he knew there was going to be a child. Solid evidence that, isn’t it?”
“Certainly; indisputable evidence. But again—quite unnecessary! Why all this palaver? I really don’t see what you are driving at. Neither I, nor my husband, nor any one else, ever doubted your announcement, years ago. We simply had no interest in the matter. What is your intention?”
“Now look here: here’s what is going to happen to-morrow night, if you don’t buy me off at my own price, and take that girl off my hands.”
Speaking, she unfolded the last of the papers she held, filling the air as she did so with the faint, sickly smell of fresh printer’s ink, and shook out a still damp half-sheet poster.
Berry did not notice it for a moment; she had taken up the baptismal certificate and the faded letter. But she turned at last and saw the bill that was held up for her inspection. And for the first time her face became really pale.
“Looks nice, doesn’t it?” said Rosalind, with a little babble of splenetic mockery. “Your niece is going to lead the Amazon march, and—in tights! She says she won’t, but she will, you know; she’ll have to give in—people always have to do that where I’m concerned. You’ll do it presently, like all the rest, and I shall leave this place with your check for fifty thousand pounds in my pocket or else these bills go up to-morrow morning, and what’s printed on them will happen to-morrow night. It doesn’t do to run foul of me, does it, now?”
“I don’t know,” said Berry, in a low, level voice; “and I really don’t think that I care, either. If you have set your mind upon doing this thing, you must do it, of course. And now, if you have said all that you have to say, be good enough to relieve me of your presence. You cannot extort one copper out of me, madam, no matter what you propose to do.”