"Your father knows something of the Count, I think?" the Doctor ventured at a hazard while they waited.
She answered that she was unaware of the circumstance.
"I have only seen this man twice in my life," she exclaimed with growing impatience. "If you are writing his biography, Doctor, I really am worse than useless."
He looked at her amazed. "This man." Surely there was nothing romantic about that.
"Writing his biography. My dear Lady Evelyn, what an idea! I quite thought he was an old friend of yours. But everyone we know is an old friend of ours nowadays," he said somewhat solemnly, as though grieved that his anticipations should thus be disappointed. "I know absolutely nothing of the Count," he went on, "except that he is a Roumanian, a country, I believe, in the south-east of Europe, with Bukharest for its capital. I remember that from my schooldays. The Roumanians shoot the Bulgarians on half-holidays, and the Bulgarians burn the Roumanians alive after they have been to church on Sundays. Evidently a country to which one should send their relatives—the elderly ones who have made their wills satisfactorily."
Evelyn was too kind to embarrass him by the declaration that her mother had been a daughter of the country he esteemed so lightly. His readiness to apologize upon every occasion was typical of a kindly man who believed that all the world was ready to find fault with him. His livelihood depended upon his recognition of the fact that illness itself is sometimes little better than a vanity—and that when an obstinate man tells you that he is an invalid, his pride is hurt if you tell him that he is not.
"My father spent many years in Roumania when he was a young man," Evelyn said, in answer to the Doctor's tirade. "Those are years he does not often speak of. I can't tell you why, Doctor, but he dislikes anyone even to remind him that he was once an attaché at Bukharest. Perhaps he will not welcome Count Odin here. I imagine it may be so."
"I'm quite certain of it," said the Doctor with a dry smile. "People who are glad to see each other do not talk like that—of course we must not listen," he added, drawing her away toward the Long Gallery; "we are not supposed to be present at all."
A sound of voices raised almost as though in anger warned him that this was no common affair. Every doctor is curious, and Dr. Philips had no merits above the common in this respect. He knew that he would narrate the whole circumstance to the Vicar later on in the evening, and that two wise heads would be shaken together over this amazing discovery. For the moment he watched Evelyn narrowly and, perceiving her agitation, found himself asking how much of her story was true. Had she, indeed, met this intruder but once in London; and was she in ignorance of the Earl's past, so far as Roumania had written it? He doubted the possibility—it seemed to him prudent, however, not to remain longer at the Hall.
"I shall run over in the morning," he said blandly; "you can tell me anything I ought to know then. There is nothing much the matter with the man, and a bump may have knocked some good sense into his head. Don't allow him to worry the Earl—I don't want another patient in the house, and your father has not looked very well lately. Send for me again if you have any trouble, and I'll be back as soon as the messenger."