"Can my father help you to do that, Count?"
"My dear lady, consider his position. An English noble, bearing his honored name; the master of great riches—what cannot he do if he will? Let him say but one word to my Government and the affair is done. I shall see my dear father again—the world will be a new world for me. My lord has but to speak."
"Is it possible that he could hesitate?"
"All things are possible where human folly is concerned."
"Then there would be a reason, Count?"
"And a consequence, Lady Evelyn."
"Oh," she said quickly, "you are not frank with me even now."
"So frank that I speak to you as I never spoke to another in all my life. You are the only person in England who can help me and help your father to do well. I have asked him for the liberty of a man who never did him a wrong. He has refused to answer me, yes or no. Why should I tell you that delay is dangerous? If I am silent a little while, do you not guess that it is for your sake that I am silent? These things are rarely hidden from clever women. Say that Count Odin has learned to be a lover and you will question me no more."
They were in a lonely glade, dark with the shade of beeches, when he made this apparently honest declaration; and he stood before her forbidding her to advance further or to avoid his entreaty. Her confusion, natural to her womanhood, he interpreted in its true light. "She does not love me, but there is that in her blood which will give me command over her," he said. And this was the precise truth. Evelyn had, from the first, been fully aware of the strange spell this man could put upon her. His presence seemed to her as that of the figure of evil beckoning her to wild pleasures and forbidden gardens of delight. Strong as her will was, this she could not combat. And she shrank from him, helpless, and yet aware of his power.
"You are speaking to me of grave things," she said quietly. "My own feelings must not enter into them. If my father owes this debt to you, he shall pay it. I will be no part of the price, Count Odin."