The conversation was picking up, and quite clearly it was the unknown who was giving it momentum. Fish had been disposed of satisfactorily and Mrs. Burgess began to regain confidence. The unknown must be checked. It would not do for the girl to go further with this light, casual discussion, conveying as she did all sorts of implications of knowledge of the great in lofty places. The vintage of the dinner gown testified unimpeachably against her having any real knowledge of Newport, a place where Mrs. Burgess had once spent a day at a hotel. Mrs. Burgess resolved to squelch the impostor. Such presumption should not go unrebuked even at one’s own table. Pendleton was now discussing aviation with this impertinent Susie, who brought to the subject the same light touch of apparent sophistication she had employed in speaking of Newport and polo. She asked him if he had read an account of a new steering device for dirigibles; she thought she had seen it in _L’Illustration_. Pendleton was interested, and scribbled the approximate date of the journal on the back of his namecard. “I suppose you came back ahead of your family, Miss Parker? I really don’t know who’s in town.” “Yes; I’m quite alone, Mrs. Burgess. You see,” and Susie tilted her head Susily and spoke directly to Mrs. Burgess, “one never really knows anything about one’s neighbors.” “Ah--you live close by?” asked Pendleton. Susie answered with an imperceptible movement of the head: “Oh, just next door, you know.” “How charming! At the sign of the lions? I noticed them as we came up. I must have another look at them. Rather good, as near as I could make out.” “They are rather nice, I think,” said Susie as one who would not boast of her possessions. “Ernestenoff did them--one of Barye’s pupils.” Burgess wondered how far she would go. Merrill’s face wore the look of a man who is dying of worry. He had lived in town all his life, and it was inconceivable that this was one of Logan’s daughters. He had forgotten the girl’s name, and he resolved to pay attention in future when people were introduced. Mrs. Burgess was too far at sea herself to bother with his perplexities. Thoroughly alarmed, she threw the conversation back three thousand years and shifted its playground from the Wabash Valley to the left bank of the Euphrates, confident that the temerarious person with the yellow hair and blue eyes would be dislodged. “When you first began your excavations in Assyria, Mr. Pendleton, I suppose you didn’t realize how important your work would be to the world.”