“No?” Diana, too, could sneer.

“No, my dear. Not after a little⁠—persuasion.”

“Who are you?” she shot at him.

His shoulders shook in the soundless laugh peculiar to him.

“I am several people, child.”

“So I apprehend,” she retorted smoothly. “Sir Hugh Grandison amongst them?”

“Ah, you have guessed that?”

“It rather leaps to the eye, sir.” She spoke in what was almost an exact imitation of his sarcastic tone.

“True. It was neatly done, I flatter myself.”

“Quite marvellous, indeed.”