If my clothes had been dry, I would have slipped away, put them on, and appeared in my proper guise. As it was, I was getting more and more miserable--ashamed of revealing who I was, and ashamed of hearing what the speakers supposed I did not understand. I sat on irresolute. In a little while, however, either the wine having got into my head, or the food and warmth having restored my courage, I began to contemplate the bolder stroke of suddenly revealing myself by some unexpected remark. They went on talking about the country, and the road they had come. ‘But we have hardly seen anything worth calling a precipice,’ said Clara. ‘You’ll see hundreds of them if you look out of the window,’ said her father. ‘Oh! but I don’t mean that,’ she returned. ‘It’s nothing to look at them like that. I mean from the top of them--to look down, you know.’ ‘Like from the flying buttress at Moldwarp Hall, Clara?’ I said. The moment I began to speak, they began to stare. Clara’s hand was arrested on its way towards the bread, and her father’s wine-glass hung suspended between the table and his lips. I laughed. ‘By Jove!’ said Mr Coningham--and added nothing, for amazement, but looked uneasily at his daughter, as if asking whether they had not said something awkward about me. ‘It’s Wilfrid!’ exclaimed Clara, in the tone of one talking in her sleep. Then she laid down her knife, and laughed aloud. ‘What a guy you are!’ she exclaimed. ‘Who would have thought of finding you in a Swiss girl? Really it was too bad of you to sit there and let us go on as we did. I do believe we were talking about your precious self! At least papa was.’ Again her merry laugh rang out. She could not have taken a better way of relieving us. ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said; ‘but I felt so awkward in this costume that I couldn’t bring myself to speak before. I tried very hard.’ ‘Poor boy!’ she returned, rather more mockingly than I liked, her violets swimming in the dews of laughter. By this time Mr Coningham had apparently recovered his self-possession. I say _apparently_, for I doubt if he had ever lost it. He had only, I think, been running over their talk in his mind to see if he had said anything unpleasant, and now, re-assured, I think, he stretched his hand across the table. ‘At all events, Mr Cumbermede,’ he said, ‘_we_ owe _you_ an apology. I am sure we can’t have said anything we should mind you hearing; but--’ ‘Oh!’ I interrupted, ‘you have told me nothing I did not know already, except that Mrs Wilson was a relation, of which I was quite ignorant.’ ‘It is true enough, though.’ ‘What relation is she, then?’ ‘I think, when I gather my recollections of the matter--I think she was first cousin to your mother--perhaps it was only second cousin.’ ‘Why shouldn’t she have told me so, then?’ ‘She must explain that herself. _I_ cannot account for that. It is very extraordinary.’ ‘But how do you know so well about me, sir--if you don’t mind saying?’