"Head over ears in love with him," he told the Vicar that night; "why, sir, she would not deceive a blind man. She's met this fellow in London and bagged him like a wounded pheasant. I shouldn't wonder if it hadn't been all arranged between them--bolting horse and all. There he is, in the chaplain's room, rambling away in a tongue a Hottentot would be ashamed of, and she's waiting for me always on the stairs just ready to hug me for a good word. What do you make of it? You've married a few and ought to be an expert."

The Vicar shook his head at the compliment and declared that it would never suit the Earl.

"He hopes that she will never marry," he said; "he has told me so himself more than once. If she does marry, he has great ambitions.

After all, she may only be naturally anxious. I dare say she's asking herself whether her own car did not do some of the mischief."

The Vicar's wife, on her part, declared the situation to be exceedingly distressing.

"There's no other lady in the house," she said aghast. "I think the Earl should be advised to return. It is so very unusual."

As a matter of fact, the Earl came home on the evening of the third day, exactly one hour after Evelyn had been sent for to see Count Odin for the first time since the tragedy. The meeting took place at the Count's request, as it has been said. Returning consciousness brought with it a full remembrance of the circ.u.mstances of the accident and a desire to thank his hostess for that which had been done. So Evelyn went to him, determined to throw herself upon his pity. No other possible course lay before her.

Dr. Philips was in the room when she entered it; but his belief that this was an _affaire de coeur_ remained obdurate, and he withdrew into an alcove, when the first introductions were over, and made a great business there of discussing the patient's condition with the nurse who had come over from Derby. Thus Evelyn found her opportunity to speak freely to the young Count. Each felt, however, that the need of words between them was small.

"My dear lady," he began, "how shall I apologize for what has happened to me? Three days in your house and not a word of regret that I intrude upon you. Ah, that clownish fellow of a coachman and the other who was asleep upon the imperial. Well, I shall long remember your English horses, and, dear lady, I am not ungrateful to them."

He held out his hand and Evelyn could not withhold her own, which he clasped with warm fingers as though to draw her nearer still toward him.

"It is impossible to speak of grat.i.tude under such circ.u.mstances," she said in a low voice. "My father will approve of all that has been done, Count. He is returning to-night from London."

She paused and looked round the room, anxious that Dr. Philips should not hear her. The Count, in his turn, smiled a little maliciously as though fully aware of her thoughts.

"Forgive me," he said again. "I came to see your father, but I did not know that he was the Earl of Melbourne. Will you not sit down, dear lady? You make me unhappy while you stand."

He touched her hand again and indicated a low chair facing his bed.

Evelyn, whose heart beat quickly, sat without protest. The minutes were brief; she had so much to tell him.

"You knew my father in Roumania, did you not?" she asked in a tone that could not hide her curiosity. The Count answered her with a kindly smile.

"He was my father's friend," he exclaimed, raising himself a little upon the pillow; "that would be more than twenty years ago. So much has happened since then, Lady Evelyn. Twenty years in a man's life and a woman's--ah, if we could recall even a few of them----"

"Even the weeks," she said meaningly, "when we were not ourselves, but another whom we wish to forget. Our friends can help us to recall those weeks, Count."

Evelyn had not understood the difficulty of confession until this moment. Her visit to London had been so entirely of her own planning, she had locked the dreams of her life so surely in the secret chambers of her heart, that this man was the first human being with whom she had shared so much as a single word of them. Secret actions and secret thoughts alike shame us when we speak of them aloud. Nothing but a dire dread of discovery would have induced her to face the humiliations of this avowal had it not been that silence must have meant discovery and discovery might mean disaster beyond any she could imagine. Count Odin, a trained man of the world, had perception sufficient to read her story instantly and to understand its full significance. Here was a woman who put herself into his power without a single thought of the consequences. He rejoiced beyond words at the circ.u.mstance, but had the wit to conceal his pleasure when he replied with an apparent generosity which earned her grat.i.tude:

"Those are the weeks when our friends should be blind, Lady Evelyn. I am glad that you tell me this. Frankly, I, too, am an artist, and can understand your father's objection to the theatre. Let us forget that the most charming Etta Romney has existed. She came from nowhere and has gone away as she came. We shall be so ungallant that we go to forget her name and the theatre and all her cleverness. Please to speak no more of it. I am your servant, and my memory is at your command. If we have met in London, so shall it be. If we are strangers when your father is come back, that also I will be ready to remember. Command my silence or my words as you think for the best."

He accompanied the words with a gesture which would have made light of the whole affair--as though to say, "This is a little thing, let us speak of something more important. The act, however, did not deceive Evelyn. Her former distrust of this man returned with new force. She felt instinctively that she must pay a price for his silence; though she knew not, nor could she imagine, what that price must be. And, more than this, she rebelled already against the penalties of deception. The net in whose meshes her daring had caught her was a net of equivocation which must degrade while it endured.

"It is for my father's sake," she said quietly, believing it at the moment really to be so. "He knows little of the theatre and dislikes it in consequence. Of course, Count, I had no intention of remaining in London. If you have any love for the stage yourself, you will understand why I went."

"No one so sympathetically, dear lady. You were born an artiste; you will die one, though you never again shall go upon the stage. Here is our friend, Dr. Philips, coming with the medicine to make us happy. Is it that we have met in London or are we to be strangers? Speak and I obey you, now and always."

"There is no necessity to say anything about it," she exclaimed, flushing as she stood up. "I do not suppose my father will ask the question. Your visit to Derbyshire was in his interests, I understand, Count."

He turned a swift keen glance upon her--far from a pleasant glance.

"I came to ask a question of him, lady. I came that he shall tell me whether my own father is a free man or a prisoner. He will not answer that question willingly. But until it is answered, I remain the guest of your house. Silence, if you please. This also is my secret and to-day is not the time to speak of it."

He raised a hand warningly and Evelyn turned about to find Dr. Philips at her side. The little man seemed more amused than ever. His idea that this was a lover's meeting, brought about by the laborious device of a bolting horse and a smashed carriage, could not be put aside.

"Doing capitally, I perceive," he remarked in that professional tone of voice which no human ill, whatever it may be, appears able to modulate or alter. "Out in a bath-chair to-morrow and steeplechasing the next day. Well, well, if we could only put youth into our bottles, what magicians we should be! Now, sir, if I had been in the carriage, the Lady Evelyn, here, would have been asking herself what she would wear at the funeral to-morrow. But I am an old man and you are a young one, and there is nothing like youth in all the world."

"A most excellent sentiment," said the Count, "and one I take to mean that I may return to London before the end of the week if the Lady Evelyn will graciously permit me to go."

Dr. Philips looked at both of them and smiled.

"You must speak to the Earl about that," he exclaimed. "Why, there is his carriage. I must go and break the news to him."

CHAPTER XIII

THE INTERVIEW

Premonition is an odd thing enough and no distant relative of that sister art of prophecy which the ancients so justly esteemed. Evelyn knew no reason whatever why her father should be offended by the presence of Count Odin at the Manor, but none the less premonition warned her that the meeting would not be unattended by consequences of some import. In this fear she had quitted the Count's room directly Dr. Philips warned her that the Earl's carriage was in the courtyard; and going out to the head of that short flight of stairs by which you reach the banqueting hall, she waited there in no little expectation, afraid she knew not of what, and yet quite sure that she had good reason to be afraid. Down below, in the great hall itself, she heard a sound of voices--for the Doctor had already begun his tale--and she tried to catch the sense of it, listening particularly for any mention of Count Odin's name, which must, she believed, be the key to this strange riddle of her adventure. When her father approached her, smiling and not ill-pleased, she was quite sure that the Count's name had not been mentioned; nor was her surmise in any way incorrect.

The Earl came up the stairs with the air of a man who is glad to get home again and has heard a good jest upon the very threshold of his house. He wore a dark tweed suit and his bronzed face, if slightly drawn by the fatigues of travel, wore, none the less, that benevolent air of content which invariably attended the a.s.surance that all was well at Melbourne Hall. Stooping to kiss Evelyn, he told her in a word that he was aware of the adventure and found it amusing enough.

"Yes, the Doctor has told me," he began; "a man and a horse and a flying machine! My dear girl, you must be careful. What will the county say if we go on like this--the second spill in a couple of months. Why, I'll have to endow an hospital for your victims! Evelyn, my dear----"

She interrupted him almost hotly.

"Doctor Philips should write books," she said quickly. "We had nothing whatever to do with it. The horse bolted from Moretown and raced up behind us. I turned into a field and saved the car. What nonsense to say that it was our fault! Ask the Count's friend how it happened. He has been to London, but he will return to-morrow. He can tell you all about it, father. I was too frightened at the time to know exactly what did happen."

The Earl, still believing that the Doctor's incoherent jargon must have some truth in it, paused, nevertheless, at the word "Count."

"Is the man a foreigner?" he asked quickly.

"He will tell you for himself," she replied evasively. "We have given him the Chaplain's Room. Please go there and ask him how it was. Dr.

Philips has been romancing as usual."

The Doctor came up to them while they spoke and looked foolish enough at overhearing her words. He certainly was a poor hand at a narrative, and his incoherent account of the tragedy had left the Earl with no other idea than that of Evelyn's recklessness and the consequences which had attended it.

"It's just like me," he exclaimed meekly, "always putting my foot in it somewhere. And a great big flat foot too, my dear. What did I tell him now? I said you were returning from Derby and the horse bolted and your car ran into a field. That's it, wasn't it now? Dear me, how very foolish!"

Evelyn did not hear him. They had strolled together down the corridor and witnessed the Earl enter the sick man's room, and now a sharp sound of voices almost in anger came up to them. On his part, Dr. Philips remained convinced that the Count had come into Derbyshire to see Evelyn and that the Earl had some knowledge of the circ.u.mstances.

Evelyn's abstracted manner seemed to bear him out in this ridiculous idea. Pale and silent and agitated, she waited for the result of that momentous interview. What had the two men to say to each other? How much she would have given to be able to answer that question!

"Your father knows something of the Count, I think?" the Doctor ventured at a hazard while they waited.

She answered that she was unaware of the circ.u.mstance.

"I have only seen this man twice in my life," she exclaimed with growing impatience. "If you are writing his biography, Doctor, I really am worse than useless."

He looked at her amazed. "This man." Surely there was nothing romantic about that.

"Writing his biography. My dear Lady Evelyn, what an idea! I quite thought he was an old friend of yours. But everyone we know is an old friend of ours nowadays," he said somewhat solemnly, as though grieved that his antic.i.p.ations should thus be disappointed. "I know absolutely nothing of the Count," he went on, "except that he is a Roumanian, a country, I believe, in the south-east of Europe, with Bukharest for its capital. I remember that from my schooldays. The Roumanians shoot the Bulgarians on half-holidays, and the Bulgarians burn the Roumanians alive after they have been to church on Sundays. Evidently a country to which one should send their relatives--the elderly ones who have made their wills satisfactorily."