“And may I have my little whim gratified too?” he asked. “I am extremely curious to know how you like your experiment as far as you have got with it.”
She did not answer immediately, and he occupied the interval by an earnest mental scuffle after some clue to what she was driving at. He knew of no man who possessed his portrait—at least among those who went down to the sea in ships. He had had no photograph taken for years, to begin with. A distant relation of his, she had said, and on a very recent voyage from America. Who the deuce could it be? What acquaintance of his had been of late in America? All at once the answer leaped upward in his mind. He laughed aloud, with an abruptness which took him not less than his companion by surprise. But then a puzzled scowl overshadowed the grin on his countenance. He saw a little way farther into the millstone, but that was all.
“I hope you don’t regret your experiment,” he repeated. “It would have been simpler, perhaps, if your father had mentioned that you were friends of Mr. Linkhaw’s. That in itself would have been an ample introduction.”
“Perhaps we should have done so, had you been alone.” Her tone was cool to the verge of haughtiness.
He rapidly considered what this might mean. Her remark clearly indicated that Vestalia’s presence had seemed to her reprehensible. Why? There was some intricacy here which he could not fathom. That confounded Drumpipes had told her—what? Eureka! He had it! The picture that she had seen was a little cheap ambrotype of Drumpipes and himself, standing together, which had been made by a poor devil of a wayside photographer, two Derby days before. Undoubtedly that was what the Earl had shown her—the only one he could have shown her. And—why of course—Drumpipes had pointed him, David, out as the Earl. What his motive could have been, heaven only knew, but this was palpably the key to the riddle.
He grasped this key with decision, on the instant. He straightened himself, frowned a little, and laboriously stiffened the tell-tale muscles about his mouth.
“I don’t think I quite like this notion of Linkhaw’s babbling about me and my affairs,” he said, with austerity.
“Oh, I assure you,” she protested, anxiously, “he was very cautious. He only gave the most sparing answers to my questions. I had to literally drag things from him.”
“But what business had he showing my picture about to begin with? He shall hear what I think of it! Men’s allowances have been stopped for less than that.”
“It will be very unjust indeed if you visit it upon him,” the girl urged, almost tremulously; “it was all my fault. I asked him one day if he had ever met a nobleman, and he, quite as a matter of course, mentioned that one of his own relatives was an Earl. One day, later, he was showing me a little tin-type of himself, and he merely said that you were the other person in the picture, that was all.”