"You knew some one was there?"
"We heard you coming in."
Acton meditated. "You had been with the Baroness, then?"
"I was in the parlor. We heard your step outside.
I thought it was my father."
"And on that," asked Acton, "you ran away?"
"She told me to go--to go out by the studio."
Acton meditated more intensely; if there had been a chair at hand he would have sat down. "Why should she wish you not to meet your father?"
"Well," said Clifford, "father does n't like to see me there."
Acton looked askance at his companion and forbore to make any comment upon this assertion. "Has he said so," he asked, "to the Baroness?"
"Well, I hope not," said Clifford. "He has n't said so--in so many words--to me. But I know it worries him; and I want to stop worrying him.
The Baroness knows it, and she wants me to stop, too."
"To stop coming to see her?"
"I don't know about that; but to stop worrying father.
Eugenia knows everything," Clifford added, with an air of knowingness of his own.
"Ah," said Acton, interrogatively, "Eugenia knows everything?"
"She knew it was not father coming in."
"Then why did you go?"
Clifford blushed and laughed afresh. "Well, I was afraid it was.
And besides, she told me to go, at any rate."
"Did she think it was I?" Acton asked.