"My child, you must have had hysteria rather badly. I must have been brutally impatient; I was so rushed just then. Poor Miss Scott brought some typing that night and wrote shorthand notes until she was tired out. Then I just happened to ask her a question about a family trouble I knew was worrying her--you remember I engaged her on a family recommendation; her people are old friends of mine--my question was an unlucky one, and the poor girl broke down; she was so thoroughly tired out. You must have chosen that exact moment to open the door----" "I didn't at least go up on purpose, and come suddenly round a corner in disguise," she protested. "Most unfortunately you did not. But--Ermengarde----" "And if I had stooped to ask explanations," she interrupted; "I ask none; I wish none now; I merely suggest that before you demand explanations of what you must know can have been nothing you could possibly complain of, certain little eccentricities on your own part require to be cleared up. What, for instance, took place under the olives yonder only yesterday morning? Why all those secret meetings and communications in cipher with a young woman of doubtful antecedents, of mysteries, of evasions, of perpetual assignations and private interviews with notorious usurers and pretended cousins? I don't wish to know--but--I resent the imputations you cast upon my intercourse with a young man who is half secretary and half waiter at this house, and at the beck and call of all here alike. I might," she added, "go further, and ask why you chose to follow me about in a ridiculous disguise, and worry and frighten me to death by spying on me and posing as an Anarchist and conspirator?" "Because I was an ass, probably. And when did I pose as anything but a foreigner? Except at the Carnival, which is all masquerade"--"The Carnival?" she murmured, puzzled--"We have both been infernal idiots, Ermengarde. We quarrelled about nothing in particular to begin with----" "If you call sarcasm, neglect, unkindness, coldness--nothing----" "I certainly was a beast. Such a rush of work had come all at once, and I hadn't time to consider that that infernal Flu had made you hysterical. And you did cut into me about going abroad on your own finance. But look here, Ermengarde, how could I have let you go alone, weak as you were? First I got Miss Scott to go and look after you as your companion----" "Miss Scott? Why, I never saw the woman in my life--except her back in the study that night--if it was she--and as for a companion, I never had such a thing in my life----" "My dear child, Miss Somers _is_ Miss Scott----" "Oh-o-o-o-oh! The woman of mystery?--my companion?" "She doesn't care to typewrite and do secretary under her own name, but, coming here with you, and having relations she was bound to meet all over the place----" "Ah--a-a-a-ah! Aunts? Step-cousins? Ivor Paul?"