"I don't understand," Sir Penthony says, vaguely. "Are there two Lady Staffords? And whose wife are you?"
"Yours! Although you don't seem in a hurry to claim me," she says, with a rarely pretty pout.
"Impossible!"
"I am sorry to undeceive you, but it is indeed the truth I speak."
"And whose picture did I get?" he asks, a faint glimmer of the real facts breaking in upon him.
"The parlor-maid's," says Cecil, now the strain is off her, laughing heartily and naturally,—so much so that the other occupants of the room turn to wonder enviously what is going on behind the curtains. "The parlor-maid! And such a girl as she was! Do you remember her nose? It was celestial. When that deed on which we agreed was sealed, signed, and delivered, without hope of change, I meant to send you my real photo, but somehow I didn't. I waited until we should meet; and now we have met and—— Why do you look so disconsolate? Surely, surely, I am an improvement on Mary Jane?"
"It isn't that," he says, "but—what a fool I have been!"
"You have indeed," quickly. "The idea of letting that odious old man see your discomfiture! By the bye, does my 'ugliness go to the bone,' Sir Penthony?"
"Don't! When I realize my position I hate myself."
"Could you not even see my hair was yellow, whilst Mary Jane's was black,—a sooty black?"