Still she did not move, did not turn her eyes toward him, but said in a loud, distinct voice:  “You see.  We are alone!  What is the use of playing this farce?”

“Well,” he cried, laughing, “your answer shows that we are really alone and need no mask.  Good-day, then, Leonore, or rather good-morning, for, as I see, you are still in your dressing-gown and probably have just risen from your couch.”

“It was four o’clock in the morning when the guests departed and I could go to rest,” she said, still retaining her recumbent attitude.

“It is true, the entertainment lasted a very long time,” he cried, dropping unceremoniously into the armchair which stood beside the divan.  “Moreover, it is true that you were an admirable hostess and understood how to do the honors of your house most perfectly.  The gentlemen were all completely bewitched by you, and, in my character of your uncle and social guide, I received more clasps of the hand and embraces than ever before in my whole life.”

“I can imagine how much it amused you,” she said coldly and indifferently.

“Yes,” he cried, laughing, “I admit that it amused me, especially when I thought what horror and amazement would fill these haughty aristocrats who yesterday offered me their friendship, if they knew who and what we both really were.”

“I wish they did know,” she said quietly.

“Heaven forbid!” he cried, starting up.  “What put such a mad, preposterous wish into your head?”

“I am bored,” she replied.  “I am weary of perpetually playing a farce.”

“But how are we playing a farce?” he asked in astonishment.  “We are trying to make our fortune, or as the French more correctly express it, Nous corrigous notre fortune.  Why do you call it playing a farce?”

“Because we pretend to be what we are not, honest aristocrats.”

“My dear, you are combining what is rarely put together in life; for you see aristocratic people are rarely honest, and honest folk are seldom aristocrats.”

“But we are neither,” she said quietly.

“The more renown for us that we appear to be both,” he cried, laughing, “and that no one suspects us.  My dear Leonore seems to have an attack of melancholy to-day, which I have never witnessed in her before, and which renders me suspicious.”

“Suspicious?” she asked, and, for the first time, turned her head slightly, fixing her eyes with a questioning glance upon the old man who sat beside her, nodding and smiling.  “Suspicious!  I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, I really did not intend to say anything definite,” he replied, smiling.  “I only meant that it is strange to see you suddenly so depressed by your position, which hitherto so greatly amused you.  And, because this seemed strange, I sought—­searching you know is a trait of human nature—­I sought the cause of this new mood.”

“Do you think you have found it?” she asked carelessly.