I kept my appointment next day, and found the baroness at home. She had a dainty little house of her own, and I suppose that at this time she kept better style, was furnished with completer credentials, was admitted to know better people, and was more liberally supplied with funds than at any other period of her curiously vagabond existence. She was to me at this time the Baroness Bonnar pure and simple, a foreign lady of wealth and position who moved in good society, had agreeable and influential friends, and obvious command of money. She was to me, in short, what she was to the rest of the world, and I had no earthly reason to doubt any of her pretences. But I had come with a definite object, and I approached it at once. She was not at all disposed to banter to-day, but met me with perfect candor. “My time is a little limited, Captain Fyffe,” she began. “Will you do me the honor to let me know at once to what I owe your visit?” “I passed you last night in Bond Street,” I returned. She nodded briefly, with her lips tight set and her eyes glittering a little dangerously, I thought. “Would you oblige me by telling me the name of your companion?” “Would you oblige me,” she retorted, “by telling me the reasons for which you ask it?” She was so very quick and resolute that I saw at once she had been prepared for the occasion. “I had rather not give my reason just at present, baroness,” I said. “I have, as a matter of fact, no reason for asking the lady's name for my own satisfaction, because I know it with much more certainty than you do.” “Oh!” she said, very quietly. “Then why do you ask?” “Let me change my question,” I responded. “Let me ask you if you have known Miss Constance Pleyel long?” “Do you know, my good Captain Fyffe,” said the little woman, toying idly with the _vinaigrette_ and sniffing at its contents now and then, “you have a manner which is abominably resolute. You are speaking to me as if you were a rustic _juge d'instruction_, and I a prisoner in the dock.” “I beg your pardon, baroness; I was conscious of no such manner. Will you oblige me by telling me if you have known this lady long?” “I do not recognize your right to question me,” said the baroness; “but since you are audacious enough to come here and to question me about that lady after what I heard last night--” she paused there of set purpose, and repeating the words “after what I heard last night” with emphasis, paused again. “After what you heard last night,” I repeated, unable to attach any meaning whatever to her words. “You decline to understand me?” she said, with a threatening nod of her pretty little head. “Very well. But if,” still with marked emphasis, “after what I heard last night you are sufficiently audacious to come here and ask me questions about Constance Pleyel, I can tell you that I have known that lady long enough to know the history of her life and how far you are responsible for the sorrows she has known.” “I responsible?” I cried.