"Talk!" cried Eddring, now suddenly breaking into flame. "Why, let them talk! It is time there was talk--time you talked to some of your old friends--you, Miss Lady, who had so many friends." "Friends!" said the girl, bitterly. "Friends!" "Yes, friends!" cried Eddring. "Surely you know that Blount and I have moved heaven and earth trying to find you. Why you should go, why you should leave every one in ignorance and take up with mummery like _this_--it is something no sane person can tell. You have not done right, Miss Lady. You have not done right!" The girl raised her head, a flame of anger upon her own cheek at this presumption. Yet she reserved her speech, and by gesture led Eddring to a spot concealed by the ivy-covered lattice. Her cheeks burned all the more hotly as Eddring went on. "What mockery!" he cried. "Yes, what mockery!" repeated Miss Lady. "What mockery that you should say these things to me! What had I up there? What was I? I was a servant, a dependent. Besides all that, things came up which would have driven any decent girl away. I could do nothing else but go. Oh, you don't know all. You can't be just, for you don't know." "But your mother?" "You mean Mrs. Ellison? She was not my mother, Mr. Eddring. I thought you knew that. That is one reason why I am here." "She was not your mother? Then that was true?" "She never was. She disappeared out of my life, and I know little about her now, excepting that she was the only mother I ever knew. There has been deception of some sort. There were so many sad and troublesome things that I could no longer endure my life as it was. I went away. I came here, I found a home." "But Colonel Blount?" "Sir, he was my friend. I can only say that in justice it was better for me to go. He is a noble man. If ever I pained him I am sorry. But as to friends--" she dangled the little domino on her finger, "this has been my only friend. It has kept me from seeing even myself. Without it I should have died." There were no tears in her eyes as she spoke. Eddring felt that he had now to do with a woman grown, sad, not light and unstable. There crowded to his tongue a thousand things. "_That!_" said he. "You, Louise Loisson--you have indeed been masquerading. Tell me, how did you get that name?" "It was an accident purely," said Miss Lady. "I found it in a book, years ago. It was unusual, and I took it for that reason. I wanted to get as far away from any possibility of detection by my friends as I possibly could. See," she smiled bitterly, "I am Louise Loisson now, the common dancer! I make my living in that way. But for that, and for the kindness of Madame Delchasse here, I might have starved. I am no longer any one you ever knew. Behind this mask sometimes I forget."