The Count looked at him keenly.
“He is evidently telling the truth,” he thought.
Thereupon he took from his pocket half a sovereign.
“My good fellow,” he began. “By the way, what's your name?”
“Mackenzie, sir.”
“Mackenzie, my honest friend, I clearly perceive that Miss Wallingford, in her very kind efforts to gratify my unconventional tastes, has put herself to quite unnecessary trouble. She has even succeeded in surprising me, and I should be greatly obliged if you would kindly explain to me the reasons for her conduct, so far as you can.”
At this point the half-sovereign changed hands.
“In the first place,” resumed the Count, “what is the meaning of this remarkably villainous portrait labelled with my name?”
“That, sir,” stammered Mackenzie, greatly taken aback by the inquiry. “Why, sir, that's the famous Count Bunker—your uncle, sir, is he no'?”
Bunker began to see a glimmer of light, though the vista it illumined was scarcely a much pleasanter prospect than the previous bank of fog. He remembered now, for the first time since his journey north, that the Baron, in dubbing him Count Bunker, had encouraged him to take the title on the ground that it was a real dignity once borne by a famous personage; and in a flash he realized the pitfalls that awaited a solitary false step.