He regarded her with such complete earnestness that Aline could hardly refrain from smiling. She bent her head a little and said: "I can understand that Monsieur le Chevalier did not know what he was doing." He stared. "What, you know me?" "And do you perhaps think that I go about volunteering information about Mlle de Matigny to every stranger I come across? Every one is not so imprudent as M. Desmond." "I ’ll not deny my name, but that I ’m imprudent—yes, with my last breath." Aline could not repress a smile. "Do you talk to all strangers as you did to me?" she inquired. "Come, now, how do you think I got here?" he returned. "I am wondering," she said drily. "Well, it ’s a simple plan, and all my own. When I see an honest face I let myself go, and tell the whole truth. Not a woman has failed me yet, and if I ’ve told the moving tale of my pursuit of Marguerite to one between this and Bâle, I ’ve told it to half a dozen." Aline gasped. "Oh, it ’s a jewel of a plan," he said easily, "and much simpler than telling lies. There are some who can manage their lies, but mine have a way of disagreeing amongst themselves that beats cock-fighting. No, no, it ’s the truth for me, and see how well it ’s served me. So now you know all about me, but I ’ve no notion who you are." "I am a friend of Marguerite’s, fortunately," she said, "and, I believe, M. le Chevalier, that I am a cousin of yours." Mr. Desmond looked disappointed. "My dear lady, it would be so much more wonderful if you were n’t. You see my great-grandfather had sixteen daughters, besides sons to the number of eight or so, and between them they married into every family in Europe, or nearly every one. Marguerite is n’t a cousin, bless her. Now, I wonder, would you be a grand-daughter of my Aunt Elizabeth, who ran away with her French dancing-master, in the year of grace 1740?" The blood of the Rochambeau rose to Aline’s cheeks in a becoming blush, as she answered with rather an indignant negative. "No?" said Mr. Desmond regretfully. "Well, then, a pity it is too, for never a one of my Aunt Elizabeth’s descendants have I met with yet, and I ’m beginning to be afraid that she was so lost to all sense of the family traditions as to die without leaving any." "If she so far forgot," Aline began a little haughtily, and then, remembering, blushed a very vivid crimson, and was silent. "Well, well, I ’m afraid she did," sighed Mr. Desmond; "and now I come to think of it you ’ll be Conor Desmond’s granddaughter, he that was proscribed, and racketed all over Europe. His daughter married a M. de—Roche—Roche——" "Rochambeau, Monsieur. Yes, I was Aline de Rochambeau." "Was?" said Mr. Desmond curiously, and then fell to whistling. "Oh, my faith, yes, I remember,—Marguerite told me," and there was a slight embarrassed pause which Desmond broke into with a laugh.