“You mean, alone?”
“Certainly, alone.”
“You dare tell me you ever contemplated—”
“Oh, yes. I think I should have done it yet, but—but Marion—”
Suddenly she bent forward, resting her face in her hands; and between the fingers a bright drop ran, glimmered, and fell.
“O Lord!” breathed Mrs. Ferrall, and sank back, nerveless, into her own corner of the rocking brougham.
CHAPTER XII THE ASKING PRICE
Siward, at his desk, over which the May sunshine streamed, his crutches laid against his chair, sat poring over the piles of papers left there by Beverly Plank some days before with a curt recommendation that he master their contents.
Some of the papers were typewritten, some appeared to be engraved certificates of stock, a few were in Plank's heavy, squat handwriting. There were several packages tied in pink tape, evidently legal papers of some sort; and also a pile of scrap-books containing newspaper clippings to which Siward referred occasionally, or read them at length, resting his thin, fatigued face between two bony hands.