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Rh once, and there is an end; or, if you disliked that method, you might have evaded the question in a hundred ways, and it was quite needless to outrage probability with so much violence.’

‘My lord Count,’ answered the Duke, much offended, ‘I was silent at table because I believed you had private reasons for concealing the circumstance of your daughter’s residence in Paris, and must still assert before every one that in Paris I had the happiness of seeing your daughter for the first time.’

‘But,’ said the Count, ‘what if I bring before you all my people to say she was never there?’

‘In despite of all,’ replied the Duke, ‘I should still believe rather the evidence of my own senses.’

‘What you say is very mysterious,’ said the Count, in a calmer voice. ‘Your manner convinces me that you must be under some extraordinary delusion. You must have taken some one else for my daughter. Forgive me for the temper into which I was betrayed.’

‘Some other person!’ cried the Duke. ‘It would then follow that I have not only mistaken another for your daughter, but that her servant was also different from what I supposed him to be, yet he described to me all that I find in this castle and its environs, precisely as they are.’

‘My dear Marino,’ said the Count, ‘it only follows that the servant was an impostor, who was well acquainted with our neighbourhood. The lady whom you saw could not have been my daughter.’

‘I am afraid to contradict you in express terms,’ said Marino, ‘but, absolutely, the features I beheld were those of Laura, nor since that meeting have they ever been absent from my remembrance.’