“We can go back for them,” suggested the doctor, who had begun to feel that he never would have a chance to see Helen alone.
“Oh, no, we needn’t mind. They are coming in their phaeton, and no doubt have started long before this. They are so good to me, I should have thought of them.”
Chloe was put out at Paradise, assuring her mistress she would come up through the woods in a few moments and no doubt be at her post in the dressing-room before the guests should arrive.
Paradise was very dark and lonesome. The few scattered cabins showed not a gleam. There was a dim light trickling from the windows of the club, but as they approached that rickety building, that disappeared. Helen saw some dark forms up close to the wall when she looked back after passing that place of entertainment.
“I reckon they are going to initiate someone tonight,” she thought.
“Chloe had such a strange talk with me today,” she told her companion and then repeated the conversation she had had with the colored girl. “I can’t quite understand her.”
“Perhaps this count is instilling some kind of silly socialistic notions in their heads,” suggested the doctor, who held the same opinion Lewis Somerville did of the gentleman who was to be their host for the evening. Indeed, he so cordially mistrusted him that only the fact he was to be with Helen had reconciled him to spending an evening under his roof.
“Oh, no, I can hardly think that, and besides, the count does not do the teaching. That is done by a Mr. Herz, his secretary. He is an American, born in Cincinnati. He seems to be very intelligent and certainly has taken a shine to Douglas. I don’t know just what she thinks of him, but she lets him walk home from school with her every now and then.”
“I don’t like the name much!”
“Well, the poor man can’t help his name. You speak as though we were already at war with Germany. I am trying to preserve our neutrality until war is declared.”