"True!" he answered smilingly. "I am not Inspector Pepys; nor is there any such person!"
The voice was different, yet somehow reminiscent. Only now, a faint, indefinable accent had crept into it.
"What do you mean?"
Zoe, at the idea that she had been imposed upon, grew regally indignant. She was a lovely woman, and accustomed to the homage which mankind pays to beauty. Her naturally frank, laughter-loving nature made her a charming companion; but she could be distant, scornful—could crush the most presumptuous with a glance of her eyes.
Now she looked at her strange visitor with frigid dignity, and he merely smiled amusedly, as one smiles at a pretty child.
"Be good enough to explain yourself. If you dared to impose upon Lady Vignoles last night—if you are not really a detective—what are you?"
"That question would take too long to answer, Miss Oppner!"
"I demand an answer! Who are you?"
"That is another question," replied the stranger, in his soft, musical voice, "and I will try to answer it. At dinner last night I told you of a man whose fathers saw the Great Pyramid built, whose race was old when that pyramid was new. I told you of an unbroken line of kings—of kings who wore no crowns, whose throne was lost in the long ago."
She closed and re-opened her right hand nervously, and a new light came into her eyes. His words had touched again, as the night before, the hidden deeps of her nature, quickening into life the mysticism that lay there. She would have spoken, but he quietly motioned her to silence—and she was silent.