Zena stared at him.
“But – he is a real – person!”
“Yes, I know,” Kendric agreed, “and that is why it is clever of me to impersonate him.”
“I know that the present Vicomte is somewhere out in the East,” Zena said, “but suppose somebody knows what he looks like?”
“I think that is unlikely,” Kendric replied, “and you know as well as I do the French are terrible snobs and sleep with the Almanach de Gotha under their pillows. If I had given a false name as I first intended, I might have been quickly exposed as an imposter.”
“I see your point,” Zena replied.
The late Vicomte de Villerny had been a friend of their father’s.
He was a distinguished man in his own field, who had spent his life collecting shells of every sort and description, and writing books about them which were only read
