The poor fellow turned scarlet, and in an humble voice blurted out—­

“She told me to do it!  Miss Julia said ye’d like me to shake hands and just ca’ ye plain Bunker.  I beg your pardon, sir; oh, I beg your pardon humbly!”

The Count looked at him keenly.

“He is evidently telling the truth,” he thought.

Thereupon he took from his pocket half a sovereign.

“My good fellow,” he began.  “By the way, what’s your name?”

“Mackenzie, sir.”

“Mackenzie, my honest friend, I clearly perceive that Miss Wallingford, in her very kind efforts to gratify my unconventional tastes, has put herself to quite unnecessary trouble.  She has even succeeded in surprising me, and I should be greatly obliged if you would kindly explain to me the reasons for her conduct, so far as you can.”

At this point the half-sovereign changed hands.

“In the first place,” resumed the Count, “what is the meaning of this remarkably villainous portrait labelled with my name?”

“That, sir,” stammered Mackenzie, greatly taken aback by the inquiry.  “Why, sir, that’s the famous Count Bunker—­your uncle, sir, is he no’?”

Bunker began to see a glimmer of light, though the vista it illumined was scarcely a much pleasanter prospect than the previous bank of fog.  He remembered now, for the first time since his journey north, that the Baron, in dubbing him Count Bunker, had encouraged him to take the title on the ground that it was a real dignity once borne by a famous personage; and in a flash he realized the pitfalls that awaited a solitary false step.

“That my uncle!” he exclaimed with an air of pleased surprise, examining the portrait more attentively; “by Gad, I suppose it is!  But I can’t say it is a flattering likeness.  ’Philosopher, teacher, and martyr’—­how apt a description!  I hadn’t noticed that before, or I should have known at once who it was.”

Still Mackenzie was looking at him with a perplexed and uneasy air.

“Miss Wallingford, sir, seems under the impression that you would be wanting jist the same kind of things as he likit,” he remarked diffidently.

The Count laughed.

“Hence the condemned cell she’s put me in?  I see!  Ha, ha!  No, Mackenzie, I have moved with the times.  In fact, my uncle’s philosophy and teachings always struck me as hardly suitable for a gentleman.”

“I was thinking that mysel’,” observed Mackenzie.

“Well, you understand now how things are, don’t you?  By the way, you haven’t put out my evening clothes, I notice.”

“You werena to dress, sir, Miss Julia said.”

“Not to dress!  What the deuce does she expect me to dine in?”

With a sheepish grin Mackenzie pointed to something upon the bed which the Count had hitherto taken to be a rough species of quilt.

“She said you might like to wear that, sir.”