His wife inquired, timidly, "Have your affairs gone disastrously?"
"Worse than that! Ruin stared us in the face until he came. Our deliverer!"
Blake flushed at this fulsome extravagance, particularly as he saw Myra
Nell making faces at him.
"Fortunately everything is arranged now," he assured his hostess. But this did not satisfy Miss Warren, who, with apparent innocence, questioned the two men until Papa La Branche began to bog and flounder in his explanations. Fortunately for the men, she was diverted for the moment by discovering that the table was set for only four.
"Oh, we need another place," she exclaimed, "for Vittoria!"
The old lady said, quietly: "No, dear. While we were alone it was permissible, but it is better now in this way."
Myra Nell's ready acquiescence was a shock to Norvin, arguing, as it did, that these people regarded the Countess Margherita as an employee. Could it be that they were so utterly blind?
He was allowed little time for such thoughts, however, since Myra Nell set herself to the agreeable task of unmasking her lover and confounding Montegut La Branche. But Cousin Althea was not of a suspicious nature, and continued to beam upon her husband, albeit a trifle vaguely. Then when breakfast was out of the way the girl added to Norvin's embarrassment by flirting with him so outrageously that he was glad to flee to Papa Montegut's piquet game.
At the first opportunity he said to Vittoria: "I feel dreadfully about this. Why, they seem to think you're a—a—servant! It's unbearable!"
"That is part of my work; I am accustomed to it." She smiled.