It was a disastrous situation for me, and one all too difficult to carry off with dignity.
“Madame,” I said. “I am the Marqués de Casa Triana. I met Lady Monica some time ago, and have this moment told her that I love her. Now, I ask your consent to—”
“Casa Triana here!” exclaimed Carmona, in a tone which could have expressed no more of horror, had I been a bandit at large.
“Have no fear for your house,” I could not help sneering.
[pg 025] He gave me a look not to be forgiven a man by a man. “I have no such fear,” he said; “but there are those here whose safety is dear to me; and your name is not one which should be spoken under the same roof.”
It was thus that he chose to inform Lady Vale-Avon, if she had been ignorant of it, that I was a notorious character.
“Will you tell me,” he went on, “how you found your way into my mother's house, where no one of your name could be an invited guest?”
“There's a window,” said I, thinking to save de la Mole, “by which the world and his wife might enter.”
“I saw you, masked, in the ball-room half an hour ago.”
Half an hour ago! Perhaps he was not exaggerating. But the thirty minutes, if there had been thirty, had passed like one.