“A droll hostess, I must say, and I am the black-affronted woman,” said she, “but through no fault of mine. I am in my own good father's house, and still, in a way, a stranger in it, and that is a hard thing. But you must not distrust my father: you will find, I think, before very long, that all the odd affairs in this house have less to do with him than with his daughter Olivia.”
She blushed again as she introduced her name, but with a sensitiveness that Count Victor found perfectly entrancing.
“My dear mademoiselle,” he said, wishing the while he had had a friseur at the making of his toilet that morning, as he ran his fingers over his beard and the thick brown hair that slightly curled above his brow,—“my dear mademoiselle, I feel pestilently like a fool and a knave to have placed myself in this position in any way to your annoyance. I hope I may have the opportunity before I leave Doom of proffering an adequate apology.”
He expected her to leave him then, and he had a foot retired, preparing to re-enter his room, but there was a hesitancy in her manner that told him she had something more to say. She bit her nether lip—the orchards of Cammercy, he told himself, never bred a cherry a thousandth part so rich and so inviting, even to look at in candle-light; a shy dubiety hovered round her eyes. He waited her pleasure to speak.
“Perhaps,” said she softly, relinquishing her brave demeanour—“perhaps it might be well that—that my father knew nothing of this meeting, or—or—or of what led to it.”
“Mademoiselle Olivia,” said Count Victor, “I am—what do you call it?—a somnambulist. In that condition it has sometimes been my so good fortune to wander into the most odd and ravishing situations. But as it happens, helas! I can never recall a single incident of them when I waken in the morning. Ma foi!” (he remembered that even yet his suspicions of the Baron were unsatisfied), “I would with some pleasure become a nocturnal conspirator myself, and I have all the necessary qualities—romance, enterprise, and sympathy.”
“Mungo knows all,” said the lady; “Mungo will explain.”
“With infinite deference, mademoiselle, Mungo shall not be invited to do anything of the kind.”
“But he must,” said she firmly. “It is due to myself, as well as to you, and I shall tell him to do so.”
“Your good taste and judgment, mademoiselle, are your instructors. Permit me.”