I had startled him back into silence. I don't know how long it was before he spoke again. It seemed to me an age. 'Mrs. Merrett! What do you mean?' 'James is dead.' 'Dead! How--how do you know?' By degrees, in reply to the questions which he put, I told him all that there was to tell. He stood staring at me, biting his finger-nails, as if he found it difficult to turn it into sense. 'Then am I to understand that Montagu Babbacombe is--or was--the Marquis of Twickenham?' 'They say so.' 'But the Twickenham peerage is one of the richest in England?' 'Maybe.' 'Then if he was the Marquis, you, as his wife, are the Marchioness.' 'I dare say.' 'Dare say! But there's no dare say about it. It's a question of fact. And, by George, that Jimmy of yours, he's a Marquis too.' 'So Miss Desmond says.' 'She does, does she? And Pollie, she's the Lady Pollie. Why, you've got a room full of titles, and I'm the only common person in it. I'm not accustomed to having intimate relations with the upper circles, so you'll have to excuse me if my manners fall short of what they ought to be. Talk of the romance of the stage. Nothing I ever heard of in that line comes within shouting distance of this. To think of you having been a Marchioness all these years and never knowing it! And such a Marchioness too! None of your pauper peeresses who have to introduce American young women to the Queen in order to make two ends meet, but the real, gilt-edged, rolling-in-riches, house-in-Grosvenor Square kind. Why, I have heard that the income of the Marquis of Twickenham is over a hundred thousand pounds a year, all profit--besides plenty of perquisites. That's better than being a Star of the Halls.' He was silent; I expect because he was turning things over in his mind. 'I remember now reading about the Marquis of Twickenham's being rather a funny lot, and I've a sort of notion that I did hear that no one knew where he was. So Babbacombe was he! Well, tastes do differ. And without wanting to know too much about what caused him to turn up, being a Marquis, I can only say that it would have wanted a lot to have made me take to the game of Wonderful Sleeping Man instead. Between a real live Marquis and even a Marvel of the Age there is a difference.' Another pause. I seemed to hear him talking to me like a person in a dream.