“My reading is no secret. I am only consulting old newspapers.”
He repeated the last words to himself. “Old newspapers?” he said—as if he was not quite sure of having rightly understood her.
She tried to help him by a more definite reply.
“I am looking through old newspapers,” she resumed, “beginning with the year eighteen hundred and seventy-six.”
“And going back from that time,” he asked eagerly; “to earlier dates still?”
“No—just the contrary—advancing from ‘seventy-six’ to the present time.”
He suddenly turned pale—and tried to hide his face from her by looking out of the window. For a moment, his agitation deprived him of his presence of mind. In that moment, she saw that she had alarmed him.
“What have I said to frighten you?” she asked.
He tried to assume a tone of commonplace gallantry. “There are limits even to your power over me,” he replied. “Whatever else you may do, you can never frighten me. Are you searching those old newspapers with any particular object in view?”
“Yes.”