"I played no trick."
"You played a part—the part of Lord Loveland."
Val stared. "How can a man play that he's himself?"
"Do you deny the newspaper accusations, then?"
"What accusations? I did knock a man down in the street, and he gave his own version of the story."
"Oh, I don't mean that story, but quite another. The story he said you knocked him down for alluding to—when——"
"We're talking at cross purposes," broke in Loveland, bewildered. "For the sake of any friendship you may ever have had for me—though I'm not asking you to continue it in future—explain what you mean."
"But, do you mean that you read nothing, heard nothing, of what they were saying about you in New York?"
"I told you I wouldn't look at the papers. What I heard I of course took for granted was in connection with the hotel affair and the row in the street."
Lesley thought for a minute, with an expression on her face which Loveland could not understand, though he did not take his eyes from her fallen lashes, the beautiful lashes which had fascinated him at first sight of her on the Mauretania.