"Ah!" said Lanyard--"but about Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes..."
"My friend: that was a good joke once; but now you must forget that name as utterly as I have forgotten another."
"Impossible."
"What do you say?" She frowned a little. "Is it possible you misunderstood? De Lorgnes was nothing to me."
"I never thought he was."
"You had reason. Because we were thrown together, and our names were something alike in sound, it amused us--not the two of us alone, but all our party--to pretend I was madame la comtesse."
"He was really a count?"
"Who knows? It was the style by which he had always passed with us."
"Alas!" sighed Lanyard, and bent a sombre gaze upon his glass.
Without looking he was aware of a questioning gesture of the woman's head. He said no more, but shook his own.