“Unhappily, it cannot be pretended that _you_ are transparent. You confront me with an opacity against which my feeble wits beat in vain. I can see that it is known to you that I know Drumpipes. But why this fact should assume in your mind such portentous and mysterious dimensions, and why you should treat it with the air of one who has unearthed a great conspiracy, a terrible secret, I can’t for the life of me comprehend.” “Ah, you are more complicated than I had thought,” she replied. “I did not imagine you would keep up the defence so long.” “Me?--a defence? never,” cried David, incited in some vague way by this remark to an accession of assurance. “I defend nothing. I surrender with eagerness. I roll myself at your feet, Miss Skinner. All I crave in return is that you will put a label on my submission. It may be weak, but I should dearly like to know what it is that I am abandoning.” “What I should suggest that you give up is your attempt to deceive me--us--as to your identity.” “Ah! am I indeed someone else, then? Upon my word, I can’t congratulate the other fellow.” “You wrote your name down for my father yesterday, and again on this card here this morning, as Mosscrop--David Mosscrop.” He assented by a nod, and allowed the beginnings of an abashed and contrite look to gather upon his face. “Well, it just happened that, the moment I first laid eyes on you, I knew who you really were. By the merest accident, your picture had been shown to me--by a gentleman who knows you intimately, and is indeed distantly related to you--on shipboard coming over. I recognised you instantly, there in the Museum, and I made papa speak to you. I was curious to see what you would say and do.” “I’m afraid you were disappointed. Did you think I would shout and dance, or what?” He struggled with some degree of success to speak impassively. “I had never met any one before in your position in life, and I had the whim to experiment on my own account.” She said this as if defending her action to herself more than to her auditor. “And may I have my little whim gratified too?” he asked. “I am extremely curious to know how you like your experiment as far as you have got with it.” She did not answer immediately, and he occupied the interval by an earnest mental scuffle after some clue to what she was driving at. He knew of no man who possessed his portrait--at least among those who went down to the sea in ships. He had had no photograph taken for years, to begin with. A distant relation of his, she had said, and on a very recent voyage from America. Who the deuce could it be? What acquaintance of his had been of late in America? All at once the answer leaped upward in his mind. He laughed aloud, with an abruptness which took him not less than his companion by surprise. But then a puzzled scowl overshadowed the grin on his countenance. He saw a little way farther into the millstone, but that was all.