"What, you?" and there was a taunt in the Count's voice. "You, Olga Petrovic, said to be the most beautiful, the most dangerous woman in Europe, you whom no man has been able to resist, but who have fascinated them as serpents fascinate birds? Are you going to be beaten by this middle-class Englishman, this Labour Member of Parliament with £400 a year? Will you have him boast that Countess Olga Petrovic threw herself at him, and that he declined her without thanks?"
"Has he boasted that?" she cried hoarsely.
"What do you think?" laughed the Count. "Is he not that kind of man?"
"No," the word came from her involuntarily. "Only——"
"Only he is much in favour with the ladies at Eastroyd. I have just been told that."
"I hate him!" she said, and her voice was hoarse.
"I wonder?" queried the Count mockingly.
"Do you know, have you found out who his visitors were that day, that morning when I saw him last?"
"An old man and a chit of a girl."
"Yes, I know that; I saw them as I left the room. The man might have been a poet, an artist, and the girl was an unformed, commonplace miss. But he did not regard them as commonplace. His eyes burnt with a new light as he read their cards. I saw it. I believe I should have had him but for that. I had conquered him; he was ready to fall at my feet; but when he read their names, I knew I had lost. Who were they?"