“Why must you harp on the Count?” she protested with a little natural impatience. “Can you not enjoy the short hour we have without letting that shadow come between us? Is it not as well that we took this secluded way, or would you rather we went where the Count would be likely to light upon us? I did not know you thought so much of him.”
“I think very little of him, dearest,” he replied. “I only wish you regarded him as indifferently as I. It is because I feel you do not that I confess I am not satisfied.”
“You silly boy!” she laughed. “I tell you the Count is nothing to me.”
“You are not afraid of him?”
“No, no,” she protested.
“You are, Philippa,” he maintained. “Do tell me why,” he added persuasively.
“No,” she replied, with an effort to mask the troubled thought which lay behind her words. “How can I, when I tell you it is not so? Count Zarka is nothing to me.”
“An object of fear?”
“No; why should he be?”
“That is what you must tell me.”