"Mr. Izard would not be so impertinent," she exclaimed hotly. "Your coming or going really does not interest me, Count. I have to be at the theatre immediately. Please let me pass!"
She tried to go by, but he still forbade her, smiling the while and seemingly quite sure of himself.
"My dear lady," he said, "you do not go to the theatre until half-past seven. This amiable person of the house has told me as much. If I am rude, forgive me. I wish to ask you to see my pictures of Roumania, a country your father once knew very well, Miss Romney, though he has not been there for many years. Say that you will come and see them to-morrow and I will ask Mademoiselle Carlotta to help me to show them to you. Now, dear lady, will you not name the hour? I shall have much to show you, much for you to tell your amiable father about when you see him again."
Etta shivered as though with cold. Never before had she known such a curious spell of helplessness as this man seemed able to cast upon her. The words which he spoke amazed her beyond all experience. Roumania! She understood vaguely that her father had lived dreadful years there so long ago that even he almost had forgotten them. And this stranger could speak of them, youth that he was, as though he held their secret. Had she wished to terminate her acquaintance with him then and there, her woman's curiosity would have forbidden her. But, more than this, the man himself attracted her in a way she could not define—attracted her, despite her early aversion from him and her sure knowledge that there must be danger in the acquaintance.
"Do you know my father, Count?" she asked presently—in a voice which could not conceal her apprehension.
"To my family he is well known, to me not at all," was the frank reply. "I came to England to make my misfortune good; but now that I come your father is not here, Miss Romney."
"Then he was not aware of your intended visit?"
"Quite unaware of it."
"You did not write to him?"
"How should I write when I do not know the house in which he live?"