Squabs and green peas displaced the entree. The burgundy was admirable. Once more he was permitted to gaze at her eyelashes. He plunged desperately. "The name Marie doesn't suit you. If ever I know you well enough I shall call you Mary. It suits your vast repose. That is why ordinary Marys are nicknamed 'Mamie' or 'Mame.'" "I was christened Mary." She raised her eyes. They were no longer wise and unfathomable. They looked as young as his own. Probably younger, he reflected. She looked appealing and girlish. Once more he longed to protect her. "Do you want to call me Mary?" she asked, smiling. "I hardly know whether I do or not. . . . There's something else I should tell you. I swore I'd never ask you any more questions--but I--well, Dinwiddie kept on the scent until he was laid up. One of the Thornhills verified your story in so far as he remembered that a cousin had settled in Virginia and then moved on to Paris. There his information stopped. . . . But . . . Dinwiddie met a Countess Loyos at dinner." "Countess Loyos?" "Yes--know her?" "Mathilde Loyos? She is one of my oldest friends." "No doubt you'd like to see her. I can get her address for you." "There is nothing I want less than to see her. Nor any one else from Austria--at present." "I think this could not have been your friend. She emphatically said--I am afraid of being horribly rude----" "Ah!" For the first time since he had known her the color flooded her face; then it receded, leaving her more pale than white. "I understand." "Of course, it may be another Countess Loyos. Like the Zattianys, it may be a large family." "As it happens there is no other." Silence. He swore to himself. He had no desire to skate within a mile of her confounded mysteries and now like a fool he had precipitated himself into their midst again. But if she wouldn't talk. . . . "Suppose we talk of something else," he said hurriedly. "I assure you that I have deliberately suppressed all curiosity. I am only too thankful to know you on any terms." "But you think I am in danger again?" "Yes, I do. That is, if you wish to keep your identity a secret--for your own good reasons. Of course, no harm can come to you. I assume that you are not a political refugee--in danger of assassination!" "I am not. What is Mr. Dinwiddie's inference?" She was looking at him eagerly. "That you really are a friend of Countess Zattiany, but for some motive or other you are using her name instead of your own. That--that--you had your own reasons for escaping from Austria----" "Escaping?" "One was that you might have got into some political mess--restoration of Charles, or something----" She laughed outright. "The other was--well--that you are hiding from your husband." "My husband is dead," she said emphatically.