have you been doing to my room?"

The butler, too confused for coherent speech, was in the act of bringing
in a small portmanteau.

"I--I mentioned, Sir Justin, your room was hardly ready for ye, sir.
Perhaps, sir, if ye'd come into the pink room----"

"What the deuce, there's hardly a stick of furniture left! And whose
clothes are these?"

"Mine," answered the Count suavely.

The stranger started violently, and turned upon the bed an eye at first
alarmed, then rapidly becoming lit with indignation.

"Who--who is this?" he shouted.

"That, sir--that----" stammered Mackenzie.

"Is Count Bunker," said the Count, who remained entirely courteous in
spite of the inconvenience of this intrusion. "Have I the pleasure of
addressing Sir Justin Wallingford?"

"You have, sir."

"In that case, Mackenzie will be able to give you a satisfactory account
of my presence; and in half an hour or so I shall have the pleasure of
joining you downstairs."

The Count, with a polite smile, turned over in bed, as though to
indicate that the interview was now at an end. But his visitor
apparently had other views.

"I should be obliged by some explanation from yourself of your entry
into my house," said he, steadily keeping his eye upon the Count.

"Now how the deuce shall I get out of this hole without letting Julia
into another?" wondered Bunker; but before he could speak, Mackenzie had
blurted out--

"Miss Wallingford, sir--the gentleman is a friend of hers, sir."

"What!" thundered Sir Justin.

"I assure you that Miss Wallingford was actuated by the highest motives
in honoring me with an invitation to The Lash," said Bunker earnestly.

He had already dismissed an ingenious account of himself as a belated
wanderer, detained by stress of weather, as certain to be contradicted
by Julia herself, and decided instead on risking all upon his supposed
uncle's saintly reputation.

"How came she to invite you, sir?" demanded Sir Justin.

"As my uncle's nephew, merely."

Sir Justin stared at him in silence, while he brought the full force of
his capacious mind to bear upon the situation.

"Your name, you say, is Bunker?" he observed at length.

"Count Bunker," corrected that nobleman.

"Ah! Doubtless, then, you are the same gentleman who has been residing
with Lord Tulliwuddle?"

"I am unaware of a duplicate."

"And the uncle you allude to----?"

By a wave of his hand the Count referred him to the portrait upon the
wall