“Your young friend, my dear Brooks,” he said, taking up his cue, “does me the honour to mistake me for some one else.  Will you inform her that I have no knowledge of the person to whom she alludes, and suggest—­as delicately as you choose—­that as she is mistaken an interview is unnecessary.  It is, I believe, my turn, Catherine.”  “You decline, then, to see her?” Brooks said.

Lord Arranmore turned upon him with a rare irritation.

“Have I not made myself clear, Brooks?” he said.  “If I were to keep open house to all the young women who choose to claim acquaintance with me I should scarcely have a moment to call my own, or a house fit to ask my friends to visit.  Be so good as to make my answer sufficiently explicit.”

“It is unnecessary, Lord Arranmore.  I have come to ask you for it yourself.”

They all turned round.  Mary Scott was coming slowly towards them across the thick rugs, into which her feet sunk noiselessly.  Her face was very pale, and her large eyes were full of nervous apprehension.  But about her mouth were certain rigid lines which spoke of determination.

Sybil leaned forward from her chair, and Lady Caroom watched her approach with lifted eyebrows and a stare of well-bred and languid insolence.  Lord Arranmore laid down his cue and rose at once to meet her.

“You are Lord Arranmore,” she said, looking at him fixedly.  “Will you please answer the question—­in my note?”

He bowed a little coldly, but he made no remark as to her intrusion.  “I have already,” he said, “given my answer to Mr. Brooks.  The name which you mention is altogether unknown to me, nor have I ever visited the place you speak of.  You have apparently been misled by a chance likeness.”

“It is a very wonderful one,” she said, slowly, keeping her eyes fixed upon him.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I regret,” he said, “that you should have had your journey for nothing.  I can, I presume, be of no further use to you.”

“I do not regret my journey here,” she answered.  “I could not rest until I had seen you closely, face to face, and asked you that question.  You deny then that you were ever called Philip Ferringshaw?”

“Most assuredly,” he answered, curtly.

“That is very strange,” she said.

“Strange?

“Yes.  It is very strange because I am perfectly certain that you were.”

He took up his cue and commenced chalking it in a leisurely manner.

“My dear young lady,” he said, “you are; I understand, a friend of Mr. Brooks, and are therefore entitled to some amount of consideration from me.  But I must respectfully remind you that your presence here is, to put it mildly, unsought, and that I do not find it pleasant to be called a liar under my own roof and before my friends.”

“Pleasant!” she eyed him scornfully; “nor did my father find it pleasant to be ruined and murdered by you, a debauched gambler, a common swindler.”