Adele halted momentarily, and surveyed his composed, swarthy countenance with lifted brows. “So you saw all along that _I_ knew!” she exclaimed, in honest surprise. “How could I have imagined that so clumsy a performance as mine would deceive so clever a young woman?” he rejoined, with a sprightly bow. “Oh, you did it awfully well,” she assured him, complacently. “But tell me, did Archie suspect that _I_ knew?” “I have been intimate with Archie from the cradle,” said David, “but I am still very shy about forming opinions as to his mental processes. In this case, however, I think it is safe to say he didn’t suspect--and still doesn’t suspect.” “Poor old Archie,” mused Adele, with a ripening smile. “I knew who he was before I’d even laid eyes on him. A school-friend of mine in Galveston wrote to me that she had met a real Earl, who insisted on being known as Mr. Linkhaw, and that he was returning to England by way of Kentucky. I’ve had three months of the rarest fun in never letting on that I had the remotest suspicion. You can’t imagine how comical it was. He used to get, quite tearful sometimes, I abused the aristocracy so fiercely. And then, the joke was, papa began--his whole idea of conversation is to take up to-day what I’ve said yesterday, and multiply my words by a hundred and twelve, and produce the result as his own; and he worked up the anti-Earl agitation till Archie very nearly went off into chronic melancholia. It was better than any comedy that ever was written--but then you stumbled your way into the middle of it, and got it all twisted and tangled up--and it hasn’t been so amusing since then.” “My dear Miss Skinner,” protested David, “I think my entrance upon the scene deserves a gentler verb. If you will search your memory, you will find that I came in by express invitation. It was you who deliberately thrust my mock honours upon me.” “Oh, I know that,” she responded, readily enough. “I thought that would only make the thing funnier still--but somehow it hasn’t. It isn’t anything about Archie and me, you know. But there is another element in the case that I feel very keenly about. It has been puzzling me for days, but I only learned the truth last night. I simply _made_ papa tell me. I refused flat-footed to come here to-day, or to do anything else that was reasonable, unless he _did_ tell me. I have a cousin here in England, Mr. Mosscrop, a daughter of my father’s own brother, and she is one of the dearest girls that ever lived.” “I can readily credit that,” declared David, pointing his meaning with a little inclination of the head.