“Well, he went and told Miss Maddison it was for her sake?”
“Incredible!”
“It's a fact!”
“I refuse to believe my friend guilty of such perfidy! Who told you this?”
“The Maddisons themselves.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the Count, as heartily as he had laughed at Lincoln Lodge; “don't you know these Americans sometimes draw the long bow?”
“You mean to say you don't believe they told the truth?”
“My dear Mr. Gallosh, I would answer you in the oft-quoted words of Horace—'Arma virumque cano.' The philosophy of a solar system is some times compressed within an eggshell. Say nothing and see!”
He shook his host heartily by the hand as he spoke, and Mr. Gallosh, to his subsequent perplexity, found the interview apparently at a satisfactory conclusion.
“And now,” said the Count to himself, “'Bolt!' is the word.”