“Certainly,” said the other. “You did not guess? But your ignorance was excusable in that case. Yes, sir, I confess, reciprocating your confidence, that my name also was assumed. I had particular reasons--as who would not have--for concealing my own in a public advertisement of such a character, and I signed with the first that occurred to my memory. It was taken from a popular feuilleton which I had observed in the hands of a young lady by whom I happened to sit months ago in the twopenny tube. ‘_Winsom Wyllie, Ladykiller_’--that was, if I remember rightly, the title of the tale, and I borrowed it haphazard in my emergency.” Gilead, like one in a dream, put his hand to his brow. “Would you--would you mind telling me,” he said, “what is your real name?” “I have no reason to be ashamed of it, sir,” said the stranger. “It is Bundy--Emmanuel Bundy.” CHAPTER XIII. THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (_continued_) Utterly dumfoundered as he was for the moment, Gilead very quickly rallied from his stupefaction, and, summoning all his native urbanity to his aid, advanced a step and seized the stranger’s right hand in both of his own. “Mr Bundy,” he said, “I apologise to you with all my heart.” His tone was so unmistakably sincere, that the obese gentleman descended, figuratively, from the stilts on which he was mounted and involuntarily returned the pressure of his fingers, only gasping a little in a slow and cod-like manner. “The sarcasm, the innuendo,” said Gilead, “of which I cannot pretend to hold myself guiltless, must have appeared to you as pointless as they were impertinent. My sole excuse is that I took you for someone else.” “O, indeed!” said Mr Bundy, heavily perplexed. “Yes,” said Gilead--“I cannot, I must not say for whom, lest I further endanger a confidence which my rashness has already sufficiently imperilled. But when I tell you, sir, in the sole attempt at self-justification which exists to me, and in response to the noble candour which has made me acquainted with your real name, that _mine_ is Gilead Balm--” “What! Of Lamb’s Agency?” exclaimed the stranger. “I entreat you, sir,” continued Gilead, “to believe that I am actuated by no spirit of empty vaunting, but, on the contrary, by one of humiliation that the business of my office should have been committed to so unintelligent a representative as myself. I can plead, sir, nothing but the excuse of good intentions. I believed you, as I say, to be someone else, and, acting upon that assumption, I answered, under a fictitious name, your advertisement, and was so happy, or so unfortunate, as to find myself engaged. My explanation can go no farther, nor be offered less lamely. Will you be generously content with it, with my reiterated apologies, and with the assurance that whatever confidences I may have surprised will remain absolutely sacred to me?”