"But you're always in evening dress, surely."

 

"I might have been in tights." And she had a malicious self-wounding pleasure in watching him gasp. She hurried into a revelation of her exact position, as soon as they had secured a just-vacated little table in a window niche. She omitted only Colonel Doherty.

 

He listened breathlessly. "And nobody knows you are Eileen O'Keeffe, I mean Nelly O'Neill?"

 

She laughed. "You see _you_ don't know which I am."

 

"It's incredible."

 

"So much the worse for your theories of credibility. The longer I live, the less the Show surprises me."

 

"What show?"

 

"Oh, it's too long to explain. Say Vanity Fair." Her thumb fell into its old habit of flicking the table. There was a silence.

 

"I am sorry you told me," he said slowly.

 

"Why?"

 

A waiter loomed over them.

 

"Supper, Sir Robert?"

 

She glanced quickly at her companion.

 

"Yes," he said. "_Ma buonissima!_ I leave it to you. And champagne."

 

"_Prestissimo_, Sir Robert." He smirked himself off.

 

"Why does he call you that?" she asked.

 

"Oh, didn't you know my poor father was made a Baronet, after we entertained Royalty?"

 

"No; how strange your lives should have been going on all the time!" The pop of a cork at her elbow startled her. Then she lifted her frothing glass. "Sir--to you!"

 

He clinked his against it. "To the lady of my dreams."

 

"Still?" She sipped the wine: her eyes sparkled.

 

"Yes; I've still a long opinion of myself."

 

She put out her hand quickly and pressed his an instant.

 

"Thank you!" he said huskily. "That was why I said I was sorry to know that to the world you were still a governess. Of course I was glad, too."

 

"I don't understand. I always said you were more Irish than I."

 

"I was glad you had kept yourself unspotted from the stage-world."

 

"Good God! You call that unspotted! What are men made of?"

 

"You were in a bad atmosphere. Your lips caught phrases."

 

"Nonsense. I'm a crow, not a parrot; a thoroughly sooty bird."

 

"It was your whiteness that attracted--your morning freshness. You don't know what vulgarity is."

 

"You don't know what _I_ am."

 

"I know you to your delicious finger-tips. And that's why I am sorry you told me so much. I wanted to ask Nelly O'Neill to marry me. Now she'll think I'm only asking Eileen O'Keeffe, the daughter of the Irish gentleman."

 

Her eyes filled with tears. "No, they both believe you capable of any folly. Besides, somebody would find out Nelly all the same." And a smile made a rainbow across her tears.

 

The arrival of the soup relaxed the tension of emotion. In mid-plate she suddenly put down her spoon and laughed softly.

 

"What is it?" he said, not without alarm at her transitions.

 

"Why, it would be one of those stock theatrical marriages, into which we entrap titles! Fascinated by a Serio-Comic, poor silly young man. She played her cards well, that Nelly. Ha! ha! ha! Who would dream of Plato's dialogues? And you talk of incredible!"

 

"I am content to be called silly." He tried to take her hand.

 

"Well, don't be it in public. You will rank with Lord Tippleton who married Bessie Bilhook, and made a Lady of her--the only ladyhood she's ever known."

 

"No, I can't rank with him," he smiled back. "I'm only a Baronet."

 

"It sounds the same. Lady Maper!" she murmured. "But, oh, how funny! There'd be two Lady Mapers."

 

"My mother would be the Dowager Lady--"

 

"That's funnier still."

 

He ate in silence. Eileen mused on the picture of the Dowager, her forefinger to heaven.

 

"The Royalty--how did that go off?" she said, as he carved the chicken.

 

"With fireworks. For the reception father built a new house and furnished it with old furniture. Royalty stopped an hour and a quarter. Oh, she was wonderful. I mean my mother. Copied your phrases--see what an impression you made."

 

"And what have you been doing since you came into the title?"

 

"Looking for you."

 

"Nonsense!" She dropped her fork. "But you knew I had people in Ireland."

 

"I never kn............