“Oh! you want to know what I’ve come for, do you? Well, you shall--and in short order, too! Yes, and you’ll dance to a more expensive tune than I first intended for treating me like this. Ten thousand would have bought me off when first I came, but it’ll cost you fifty thousand now, I promise you.” “There’s a mistake on your part--it won’t cost me a penny. If you have any idea of blackmailing me because you are--well, what you are, get that idea out of your mind at once. That my stepbrother married a creature who was--and apparently still is--scarcely a fit associate for one of my scullery maids and that I disowned him for it, are matters that are known to every one who knows me, and I should scarcely be likely to pay you money to keep secret a thing that is public property.” “Oh! that’s the ‘tack’ you’re going on, is it? Well, suppose I start in telling something that everybody doesn’t know--not even you yourself--what then? Look here, my Lady High and Mighty, you snuffed me out as a wife and widow, but you can’t snuff me out as a mother--the mother of your brother’s daughter, a child born in honorable wedlock nearly eighteen years ago.” Save that it grew perhaps the fraction of a shade paler, Berry’s face changed not one whit. She flung away her cigarette and fumbled for a moment among the folds of her skirt, then her unsteady hand drew a packet of paper from her pocket, loosened the bit of string that held it together, and flirted off two documents from the top. “There’s her baptismal certificate, for one, and my marriage lines, for another,” she said, “and here’s one of Adrian’s letters to me acknowledging that he knew there was going to be a child. Solid evidence that, isn’t it?” “Certainly; indisputable evidence. But again--quite unnecessary! Why all this palaver? I really don’t see what you are driving at. Neither I, nor my husband, nor any one else, ever doubted your announcement, years ago. We simply had no interest in the matter. What is your intention?” “Now look here: here’s what is going to happen to-morrow night, if you don’t buy me off at my own price, and take that girl off my hands.” Speaking, she unfolded the last of the papers she held, filling the air as she did so with the faint, sickly smell of fresh printer’s ink, and shook out a still damp half-sheet poster. Berry did not notice it for a moment; she had taken up the baptismal certificate and the faded letter. But she turned at last and saw the bill that was held up for her inspection. And for the first time her face became really pale.