."

"Saw what?"

"Saw you pretending to be a stranger to me."

"When did I do that?"

"You did it when we met at the station."

The reply was too ridiculous for the preservation of any control over my
own sense of humor. It was wrong; but it was inevitable--I laughed. She
looked at me with a fury, revealing a concentration of evil passion in
her which I had not seen yet. I asked her pardon; I begged her to think
a little before she persisted in taking a view of my conduct unworthy of
her, and unjust to myself.

"Unjust to You!" she burst out. "Who are You? A man who has driven your
trade has spies always at his command--yes! and knows how to use them.
You were primed with private information--you had, for all I know, a
stolen photograph of me in your pocket--before ever you came to our
town. Do you still deny it? Oh, sir, why degrade yourself by telling a
lie?"

No such outrage as this had ever been inflicted on me, at any time in my
life. My forbearance must, I suppose, have been more severely tried than
I was aware of myself. With or without excuse for me, I was weak enough
to let a girl's spiteful tongue sting me, and, worse still, to let her
see that I felt it.

"You shall have no second opportunity, Miss Gracedieu, of insulting me."
With that foolish reply, I opened the door violently and went out.

She ran after me, triumphing in having roused the temper of a man old
enough to have been her grandfather, and caught me by the arm. "Your
own conduct has exposed you." (That was literally how she expressed
herself.) "I saw it in your eyes when we met at the station. You, the
stranger--you who allowed poor ignorant me to introduce myself--you knew
me all the time, knew me by sight!"

I shook her hand off with an inconsiderable roughness, humiliating to
remember. "It's false!" I cried. "I knew you by your likeness to your
mother."

The moment the words had passed my lips, I came to my senses again; I
remembered what fatal words they might prove to be, if they reached the
Minister's ears.

Heard only by his daughter, my reply seemed to cool the heat of her
anger in an instant.

"So you knew my mother?" she said. "My father never told us that, when
he spoke of your being such a very old friend of his. Strange, to say
the least of it."

I was wise enough--now when wisdom had come too late--not to attempt to
explain myself, and not to give her an opportunity of saying more.
"We are neither of us in a stat