“You won’t mind if I forget and call you Mr. Bannister instead of Mr. Holloway?”
She thought his counterfeit astonishment perfect.
“So I’m Ned Bannister, am I?”
Their eyes clashed.
“Aren’t you?”
She felt sure of it, and yet there was a lurking doubt. For there was in his manner something indescribably more sinister than she had felt in him on that occasion when she had saved his life. Then a debonair recklessness had been the outstanding note, but now there was something ribald and wicked in him.
“Since y’u put it as a question, common politeness demands an answer. Ned Bannister is my name.”
“You are the terror of this country?”
“I shan’t be a terror to y’u, ma’am, if I can help it,” he smiled.
“But you are the man they call the king?”