"Madame will be much beholden to you," says she, and drops me a mocking curtsey.
I walked down the staircase in a prodigious elation. Six steps from the floor of the hall it made a curve, and as I turned at the angle I stopped dead of a sudden with my heart leaping within my breast. For at the foot of the stairs, and looking at me now straight in the face, as he had looked at me in the archway of Bristol Bridewell, I saw Otto Krax, the servant of Count Lukstein. The unexpected sight of his massive figure came upon me like a blow. I had forgotten him completely. I staggered back into the angle of the wall. He must know me, I thought. He must know me. But he gazed with no more than the stolid attention of a lackey. There was not a trace of recognition in his face, not a start of his muscles; and then I remembered the difference in my garb. 'Twould have been strange indeed if he had known me.
I recovered my composure, drew a long breath of relief, and was about to step down to him when I happened to glance up the stairway.
The Countess herself was leaning over the rail at its head, with the light from the hall-lamp below streaming up into her face. I had not heard her come out on the landing.
"I knew not whether Otto Krax was there to let you out" She smiled at me. "Good night!"
"Good night," said I, and looking at Otto, I understood whence she might have got some knowledge of Sir Julian Harnwood.
Once outside, I stood for a while loitering in front of the house, and wondering how much 'twould cost to buy it up. For I believed that it would be a degradation should any other woman lodge in those same rooms afterwards.
In a few minutes Elmscott came out to me.
"You have seen the Countess Lukstein before?" he asked, and the words fairly startled me.
"What in Heaven's name makes you think that?"