"Yes," she said trembling.
He gave a little start and shuddered--tottered--then he pulled himself up and flung the newspaper at her feet--at hers--his butterfly, his darling!
"Read that," he said.
Von Klinger tried to seize the paper, but Sterzl held him with a firm hand. "Your leniency is out of place," he said dully; "she may read anything."
Zinka read; suddenly she sprang up with a cry of horror and the paper fell out of her hand. Even now she did not understand the matter,--exactly what she was accused of she did not know; only that it was something unwomanly and disgraceful.
"Cecil!" she began, looking into his face, "Cecil...." and then she covered her face, which from white had turned crimson, with her hands. He meanwhile had felt the absolute innocence of the girl, and was repenting of his rash and cruel wrath.
"Zini," he cried, "forgive me--I was mad with rage--mad." And he tried to put his arm round her. But she held him off.
"Leave me, leave me," she said. "No, I cannot forgive you. Oh Cecil! if all the newspapers in the world had said you had cheated, for instance--do you think I should have believed them?"
He bent his head before her with a certain reverence: "But this is different, Zini," he said very gently; "I do not say it as an excuse for myself, but it is different. You do not see how different because you are a child--an angel--poor, sweet, little butterfly," and he drew her strongly to his breast and laid his lips on the golden head; she however would not surrender and insisted on freeing herself.
"What on earth is going on?" the baroness asked again, for the twentieth time. Getting, even now, no reply, she picked up the newspaper that was lying on the floor, caught sight of the article, read a few lines of it, and broke out into railing complaints of Zinka--enumerating all the sins of which Zinka had been guilty from her earliest years and particularly within her recent memory, and ending with the words: "And you will ruin Cecil yet in his career."