Then he remembered how recklessly he had gone to the door to purchase the paper, and, returning, had turned on the full blaze of gas to read by, and, before he had read half a dozen lines, his strange client had appeared, and the paper had been entirely forgotten from that time.
Doubtless it would have been destroyed, and he never would have seen this, to him, highly important paragraph had it not been used as a wrapper for the papers which the little, thin-visaged, wiry man had brought him.
“It is hardly six months now since this paper was printed,” he said, with a shade of anxiety on his face, as he turned to look at the date again.
Then he sat down to think, evidently deeply troubled and perplexed about something.
Meanwhile the boy brought him in his evening paper, for he could afford to have one regularly now, and mechanically he unfolded it and began to read. He had nearly looked it through, when, under the heading of “Gleanings,” he read this:
“It will be remembered by the frequenters of Newport that Mr. Paul Tressalia was suddenly recalled abroad, at the last of the season, by the serious illness of his uncle, the Marquis of Wycliffe, who has since died, and, being childless, Mr. Tressalia thus becomes heir to his vast possessions in both England and France, and also to his title.”
Earle’s face was startlingly pale as he read this, while his broad chest rose and fell heavily, as if he found a difficulty in breathing.
“That must be the Paul Tressalia who was here last winter, and—who was so attentive to Editha,” he said, with white lips.
For an hour he sat with bent head, deeply-lined brow, and an expression of deep pain and perplexity on his face.
“I must do it,” he said at last, “and the quicker the better.”