"I'm afraid it is. I'm very much afraid you will think it very bad news."
She waited for him to go on, which he did, speaking with difficulty, for he was touched to see that her colour had faded in a moment. It was a very white face which was turned to him now.
"My father managed a business matter for Mrs. Douglas," he went on. "Your father, when he was dying, asked him to invest some money for her."
"Yes, I know. Mother has often told me how kind he was in doing it for her, and in seeing after it all these years."
"He put the money—your father's insurance money, I believe it was—in India three and a half per cents."
"Yes; mother said it was there."
"It was there."
"Is it not there now?"
"No, not now. My father found what he thought was an exceedingly good investment. He put all his own money into it. Miss Douglas, please remember that—all his own money. And he wanted Mrs. Douglas to share in the good interest that he was receiving, and so he took her money out of the three and a half per cents. and put it in with his own."
"And you have come to tell us it is all lost," she said. She did not say it angrily or bitterly, only very sorrowfully.