Livingstone, however, had the grace to feel a good deal ashamed of himself as they returned to the drawing-room. In all that had gone before, he had been a victim of circumstances. He had an uncomfortable conviction that his position now was not wholly unlike that of an impostor. But as he pushed aside the portiere he beheld a pair of blue eyes which, he flattered himself, betrayed an expression of pleased expectancy--and his compunctions vanished. There was only a little time left to them, for the evening was almost at an end. Their talk came back to travel. Did she like travelling in America? he asked. Yes, she liked it very much indeed, "only "--as a sudden memory of a past experience flashed into her mind--"one does sometimes meet such dreadfully horrid people!" They were sitting, as they talked, in a narrow space between a table and the wall, made narrower by the presence of an unused chair. Just as this memory was aroused, some one tried to push by them, and Livingstone, rising, lifted the obstructing chair away. To find a clear space in which to put it down, he lifted it across the table; and for a moment he stood erect, holding the chair out before him at arm's-length. When he seated himself and turned again to speak to Grace, he was startled to find that her face and shoulders, and even her arms--her arms and shoulders were delectable--were crimson; and in her eyes he found at last the look of recognition that he had hoped for earlier in the evening, but that now he had ceased to expect. Recognition of this emphatic sort he certainly had not expected at all. "You--you see," she said, "I al--always have thought that you were a robber and a murderer, and shocking things like that. And I didn't really see you that day, except as you walked away, holding up that horrid little man, kicking--just as you held up the chair. Can you ever, ever forgive me for thinking such wicked things about you, and for being so ungrateful as not to know you at the very first?" And Livingstone, then and later, succeeded in convincing her that he could. VIII. By an emphatic whisper Miss Grace Winthrop succeeded in impressing upon her aunt the necessity--at no matter what sacrifice of the social conventions--of being the last to go. In the matter of keeping Livingstone, she experienced no difficulty at all. And when the unnecessary eight had departed, she presented to her aunt and uncle her deliverer, and--in a delightfully hesitating way--told to Mr. and Mrs. Smith the story of her deliverance. It was when this matter had been explained that Livingstone, who felt that his position now was absolutely secure, brought up the delicate question of his own identity.