While these thoughts were passing quickly through her mind, one of the drawing-room windows opened very quietly, and Cristina walked out of it. She looked curiously ethereal and ghostly in the moonlight, and her small face was white and drawn. She put her finger on her lips.
“Hush!” she whispered. “I thought I heard footsteps, so I peeped out and saw that it was only you, Mademoiselle.”
“Yes,” whispered back Lily. “Count Beppo had a breakdown, and couldn’t return in time for the play, so I’ve come home. Are the Count and Countess upstairs yet?”
The question seemed superfluous, as otherwise they would have been in the room whence Cristina had just come. But the old woman shook her head.
“Sh—sh!” she murmured under her breath. And then she uttered the words, “Il y a du monde.” It is an untranslatable expression, which may be roughly rendered as, “We have company to-night,” the words being applicable to one visitor or to a dozen.
“Hasn’t Mr. Vissering gone yet?” asked Lily. “How very strange, Cristina—he said he must go quite early. I’d better go straight up to my room,” went on the girl in a low voice. She stepped into the dark drawing-room. Where were the Count and Countess and their guest?
“The visitor came late,” murmured the old servant. “They are still in the dining-room.”
In a darkness made more dense by the moonlight outside, Cristina took Lily’s hand, and together they crept very quietly into the corridor.
And then something curious happened. When they were about to go past the aperture which led into the dining-room, of which the door was wide open, the old woman stepped back and turned down the little oil lamp which lighted the corridor. Thus, for a moment, Lily was in darkness, while able to see clearly into the large, windowless room.
The Count and Countess were sitting one on each side of their guest. He, alone, had his broad, bent, high back to the door.