“Then I will tell you—what I have not told any one else—that I know very well that you are not the person who appeared at Bar Harbor three years ago and palmed himself off as the Baron von Kissel.”
“You know it—you are quite sure of it?” he asked blankly.
“Certainly. I saw that person—at Bar Harbor. I had gone up from Newport for a week—I was even at a tea where he was quite the lion, and I am sure you are not the same person.”
Her direct manner of speech, her decisive tone, in which she placed the matter of his identity on a purely practical and unsentimental plane, gave him a new impression of her character.
“But Captain Claiborne—”
He ceased suddenly and she anticipated the question at which he had faltered, and answered, a little icily:
“I do not consider it any of my business to meddle in your affairs with my brother. He undoubtedly believes you are the impostor who palmed himself off at Bar Harbor as the Baron von Kissel. He was told so—”
“By Monsieur Chauvenet.”
“So he said.”
“And of course he is a capital witness. There is no doubt of Chauvenet’s entire credibility,” declared Armitage, a little airily.