"There has been a difference these last few days," she whispered. "I am afraid—I am terribly afraid that he has done something really wrong."
Arnold felt a little shiver of fear himself.
"You must remember," he said quietly, "that after all Isaac is, in a measure, outside your life. No one can influence him for either good or evil. He is not like other men. He must go his own way, and I, too, am afraid that it may be a troublous one. He chose it for himself and neither you nor I can help. I wouldn't think about him at all, dear, if you can avoid it. And for yourself, remember always that you have another protector."
The faintest of smiles parted her lips. In the moonlight, which was already stealing into the room through the bare, uncurtained window, her face seemed like a piece of beautiful marble statuary, ghostly, yet in a single moment exquisitely human.
"I have no claim upon you, Arnold," she reminded him, "and I think that soon you will pass out of my life. It is only natural. You must go on, I must remain. And that is the end of it," she added, with a little quiver of the lips. "Now let us finish talking about ourselves. I want to talk about your new friends."
"Tell me what you really think of them?" he begged. "Count Sabatini has been so kind to me that if I try to think about him at all I am already prejudiced."
"I think," she replied slowly, "that Count Sabatini is the strangest man whom I ever met. Do you remember when he stood and looked down upon us? I felt—but it was so foolish!"
"You felt what?" he persisted.
She shook her head.
"I cannot tell. As though we were not strangers at all. I suppose it is what they call mesmerism. He had that soft, delightful way of speaking, and gentle mannerism. There was nothing abrupt or new about him. He seemed, somehow, to become part of the life of any one in whom he chose to interest himself in the slightest. And he talked so delightfully, Arnold. I cannot tell you how kind he was to me."