"My dear Mr. Izard," she said, "I fear you don't understand me at all.

Who Mr. Belinger may be I don't know; but he certainly has not made me any offers. And just as certainly should I refuse them if he did so.

You have been generous enough to give me my chance. If I remain on the stage, it will be with you."

Izard opened his dull eyes very wide.

"If you remain upon the stage! Good G.o.d, you don't mean to say that you have any doubt of it?"

"I have every doubt."

"Have you read the papers?"

"Oh, but you told me not to pay any attention to them----"

"That's from the front of the house point of view. Don't you know that they say you are as great as Rejane?"

"I cannot possibly believe that."

"It won't be so difficult when you try. Go home and read them again and come to me to-morrow morning to sign agreements."

He was pleased at her promise to continue at his theatre and clever enough to understand her reticence.

"She's a genius," he said to himself, "and she's more than that, she's a woman of business. Well, I like her sort. When Belinger goes round, he'll get some dry bread. As for her leaving the stage--pooh! she couldn't do it."

Had he known what Etta was saying at that very moment, his self-satisfaction a.s.suredly had been less. For when she returned to her rooms in Bedford Square she found the expected letter from her father awaiting her there and in it she read these words: "I shall be returning to England on the 29th of June."

She had a short month, then, to live this Bohemian life which so fascinated her! And when that month was over Etta Romney would cease to be, and the stately Lady Evelyn must return.

CHAPTER VI

STRANGERS IN THE HOUSE

The news in the letter alarmed Etta not a little; but when she reflected upon it, she remembered that it was just such news as she had been expecting all along. Her adventure had been for a day. She had never hoped that it would be more. The desire to appear upon the stage of a theatre had haunted her since her childhood. Now she had gratified it. Why, then, should she complain?

True, the glamour of the stage no longer deceived her. All the gilt edge of her dreams had vanished at rehearsal. She no longer believed the theatre to be a paradise on earth. It was a somewhat gloomy, business-like, and sordid arena of which the excitements were purely personal, and concerned chiefly with individual success and achievement. These she had now experienced and found them unsatisfying. A morbid craving for something she could not express or define remained her legacy. The "Etta" in her had not been blotted out by triumph. Had she known it, she would have understood that nothing but tragedy would efface it.

This, naturally, she did not know. Believing her time to be brief, she desired to see as much of Bohemia as the numbered weeks would permit; and she refused no invitation, however imprudent it seemed, nor denied herself any experience by which her knowledge might profit. A perfect mistress of herself, she did not fear whatever adventure might bring her. Her desire had been to do exactly what the ordinary stage girl did--to live in lodgings, to tramp about the London streets, to spend little sums of money as though they had been riches, to give a girlish vanity free rein. Sometimes she almost wished that a man would make love to her. The homage of men, she had read, always attended success upon the stage. Etta would have been delighted to evade her pursuers, to see their flowers upon her table, to read their ridiculous letters.

For the moment, however, her dramatic experiences appeared likely to be somewhat prosaic. She had answered Mr. Charles Izard with the intimation that she would give him a definite reply within a week, and with that, perforce, he had to be content. The early promise of success for "Haddon Hall" was amply justified. The business done at the Carlton Theatre proved beyond experience. There were two matinees a week, and splendid houses to boot. Etta delighted in the triumphs of these more than words could tell. The thunderous applause, the ringing cheers, the frequent calls, animated her whole being and awoke in her the finest instincts of her inheritance. She knew that she had been born an actress, and that nothing would change her destiny. All the frivolous life of the theatre could show her made their instant appeal to her senses and were enjoyed with a child's zest. Her gestures were quick and excited, and, as little Dulcie Holmes would say, "so French."

She could behave like a schoolgirl sometimes--a schoolgirl freed from bondage and ready for any tomboy's play.

This was her mood on the afternoon of the seventh day after the first production of "Haddon Hall" at the Carlton Theatre. The exceedingly "genteel" Lucy Grey had invited a few friends to tea upon that occasion; and an artist, known to all the halfpenny comic papers as "Billy," a lodger in the same house as Lucy, kindly put his studio at the disposal of the company. Here for a time gentility reigned supreme over the tea-cups. The theatrical ladies found themselves awe-struck in the presence of Etta Romney, and remained so until the amiable painter volunteered to do a cake-walk if Dulcie Holmes would accompany him. This set the ball rolling; and although gentility suffered a snub when a lady from the Vaudeville remarked that she always "gorged"

currant loaves, nevertheless merriment prevailed and some striking performances were achieved. Etta had not laughed so much since she left the convent school--and she could not help reflecting, as she returned to Bedford Square, upon the vast capacity for innocent enjoyment these merry girls possessed and the compensations it afforded them in lives which were by no means without their troubles.

It was a quarter to six when she reached her lodgings. She had time upon her hands, for seven o'clock would be quite early enough to set out for the theatre. The weather promised to become a little overcast as she stood upon her doorstep; and she was conscious of that sudden depression with which an approaching storm will often afflict nervous and highly sensitive people. Opening the front door slowly, with her eyes still watching the creeping clouds above, she became aware that there were strangers in the hall beyond, and she stood for an instant to hear rapid words in the German tongue--a language her father had always advised her to study and had insisted upon the good nuns teaching her. To-night it served her well, for by it she became aware instantly that the strangers were speaking of her--indeed, that they awaited her coming.

"Go into the room," said a voice. "I must be alone here."

Another said, "Hush, that's her step!"

Etta turned as pale as the marguerites in the flower boxes when she heard these words; though, for the life of her, she could not say why she was alarmed. Perhaps the constant fear of discovery which had attended her escapade from the beginning a.s.serted itself at the moment to say that these strangers knew the truth and had come to profit by it. If this were so, the idea pa.s.sed instantly to give place to that more sober voice of reason which asked, "How should a stranger know of it, and what is my secret to him?" Such an argument immediately rea.s.sured her; and, entering the hall boldly, she found herself face to face with no other than the Roumanian, Count Odin, who had been presented to her eight days ago at the Carlton Hotel.

Now, here was the last man in all London whom Etta had expected to see in Bedford Square, and her astonishment and distaste were so plainly visible in her wide-open eyes that the victim of them could not possibly remain under any delusion whatever. Plainly, however, he was quite ready for such a welcome as she intended to give him, for he barred her pa.s.sage up the hall and, holding out his hand, greeted her with that accepted familiarity so characteristic of the idlers who lounge about stage-doors.

"My dear lady," he said, "do not put the displeasure upon me. I come here because my friend, Mr. Izard, recommend me when I ask him where I shall find a lodging. 'Miss Romney is at Bedford Square,' that's what he says; 'go right there and you will find an apartment in the same street.' Now, isn't it wonderful! I arrive at your house by accident and here is your landlady who has the dining-room to let. You shall forgive me for that when I say that my friend, Horowitz, is with me and his sister. Why, Miss Romney, we'll be just a happy family together; and that's what Charles Izard was thinking of when he sent me here.

'Tell her I wish it,' he said; 'she's too much alone in London, and it doesn't do----'"

Etta interrupted him with a dignity he had not looked for.

"Mr. Izard would not be so impertinent," she exclaimed hotly. "Your coming or going really does not interest me, Count. I have to be at the theatre immediately. Please let me pa.s.s!"

She tried to go by, but he still forbade her, smiling the while and seemingly quite sure of himself.

"My dear lady," he said, "you do not go to the theatre until half-past seven. This amiable person of the house has told me as much. If I am rude, forgive me. I wish to ask you to see my pictures of Roumania, a country your father once knew very well, Miss Romney, though he has not been there for many years. Say that you will come and see them to-morrow and I will ask Mademoiselle Carlotta to help me to show them to you. Now, dear lady, will you not name the hour? I shall have much to show you, much for you to tell your amiable father about when you see him again."

Etta shivered as though with cold. Never before had she known such a curious spell of helplessness as this man seemed able to cast upon her.

The words which he spoke amazed her beyond all experience. Roumania!

She understood vaguely that her father had lived dreadful years there so long ago that even he almost had forgotten them. And this stranger could speak of them, youth that he was, as though he held their secret.

Had she wished to terminate her acquaintance with him then and there, her woman's curiosity would have forbidden her. But, more than this, the man himself attracted her in a way she could not define--attracted her, despite her early aversion from him and her sure knowledge that there must be danger in the acquaintance.

"Do you know my father, Count?" she asked presently--in a voice which could not conceal her apprehension.

"To my family he is well known, to me not at all," was the frank reply.

"I came to England to make my misfortune good; but now that I come your father is not here, Miss Romney."

"Then he was not aware of your intended visit?"

"Quite unaware of it."

"You did not write to him?"

"How should I write when I do not know the house in which he live?"

"Then why do you say that he is not in London?"

He looked at her with the triumphant eyes of a man who puts a master card upon the table.

"I say that he is not in England because you are alone, Miss Romney."

Etta bit her lips, but gave no other expression to her emotion.

"A compliment to my discretion," she exclaimed with a little laugh; and then, as though serious, she said, "You will make me late for the theatre after all. Do please talk of all this to-morrow."

He drew aside instantly.

"Izard would never forgive me," he said; "let it be to-morrow as you wish--shall we say at twelve o'clock?"