Etta colored visibly; but fearing a misconception of her momentary confusion, she said to Mrs. Izard:
"The Count and I ran into each other in the Strand the other day. I fear I was very clumsy."
"So little," said the Count, "that never shall I call a cab in London again without remembering my good fortune."
He drew a chair to Etta's side and sat so near to her that even the great man remarked the circumstance.
"That's how I'd like to see 'em sit down in my comedies," he remarked with real feeling. "The young men I meet can't take a chair, let alone fix themselves straight on it. You come along to me, Count, and I'll pay you a hundred dollars a week to be master of the ceremonies. Our stage manager used to do stunts on a bicycle. He thinks people should do the same on chairs."
Count Odin looked at the speaker a little contemptuously with the look of a man who never forgets his birthright or jests about it. To Etta he said with an evident intention of explaining his position:
"Mr. Izard crossed over with me the last time I have come from America. I remember that he had the difficulty with his chair on that occasion." And then he asked her—"Of course you have been across, Miss Romney; you know America, I will be sure?"
Etta answered him with simple candor, that she had travelled but little.
"I was educated in a convent. You may imagine what our travels were. Once every year we had a picnic on the Seine at Les Andlays. That's where I got my knowledge of the world," she said with a laugh.
"Then your ideas are of the French?" He put it to her with an object she could not divine, though she answered as quickly.