She looked up surprised--alarmed, too, this time, he felt sure--but said with a smile, "If it is anything in my power." "It is quite in your power. It is very simple. Do you know that I have known you all this time without knowing you by anything else than the absurd official (if I may call it so) generic name of Mademoiselle?" She coloured a little and laughed. "That is allright," she said, with one of the few slips she made in English, running the last two words into one. "It is an official title, and I am Mademoiselle. You would refuse to let an Englishwoman be called Miss, but with a Frenchwoman it is allright." "I don't think it all right; I dislike it very much. Will you permit me the pleasure of being able to call you by your name?" Mademoiselle paused a little. She was evidently doubtful which was the more dignified--debating between a reluctance to reply and a reluctance to permit it to be seen that she had any objection to reply. A denial, it appeared to her, might seem coquettish--a sort of challenge to a playful struggle. So she raised her head and answered, "I am Claire de Castel-Sombre," with the air of a queen. "Ah," said Wargrave, "I thought as much. Is it out of pity for us as nobodies, with a name never heard of till our grandfathers went into business, that you have concealed, Mademoiselle de Castel-Sombre, _un si beau nom_?" "I have not concealed it," she said with a smile. "Mrs Wargrave knows my name; but why waste breath upon so many syllables when Mademoiselle answers every purpose just as well?" "That is a little scoff at us as industrials--not willing to waste anything, even our breath." She shook her head. "I will not be tempted into an argument." "No?" said Wargrave, changing rapidly from one language into the other. He knew French well, which is not too common with young men about town, and he was proportionately pleased with his own acquirement, and glad to note the little start of light and colour in Mademoiselle's face. "You are too proud to argue or even to assert the difference between an old noble name of Béarn and a common English one which, on the foundation of a little money, sets itself up as something, and condemns a woman like you, such a woman as you, to give up every attribute of real life and waste all your gifts and become an abstraction for the benefit of two----" "Stop, stop!" she cried; "you are going a great deal too far. I am not compelled to anything. I am doing only what it is my business to do, in circumstances which are unusually comfortable and favourable. I do not know what can have put such an idea of my situation into your mind."