"You mean," she laughed, very pretty and pink, "that it is no affair of
mine that you are."

A kind of desperation seized him. It was evident that she did not
believe him, just as Coligny Smith had not believed him, and the plump
young woman of the grocery who had used his Christian name. He was
almost ready not to believe himself. However, there were cards in his
pocket; he got one of them out, and coming nearer, handed it to her.

"My name is Laurence Varney," he said mechanically, for that slogan
seemed fated to meet skeptics everywhere. "I am from New York and have
happened to come up here on a friend's yacht to--to spend a few days.
You have made a mistake."

She took the card, held it lightly in her gloved hand, bowed to him with
mocking courtesy.

"I am very glad to meet you--Mr. Laurence Varney! I--I am from New York,
too, and have happened to come up here on the New York Central with my
mother to spend a few years. And I live in a white house half a mile
down the road, where I ought to have been an hour ago. And I am Mary
Carstairs, who has read all your books and thinks that they--Oh"--she
broke off all at once: for there was no missing the look in his
astounded face. "What in the world have I said now?"

"You--can't be--_Mary Carstairs_!" he cried.

"Is--that so terrible?" she laughed, a little uncertainly.