“The Prince was well known to be rather more than an admirer of yours, Fräulein.”
“Absurd!” she burst out. “An admirer, perhaps, but nothing more, and you have no warrant for supposing such a thing. Do men make away with themselves for unreturned admiration? I am not to be at the mercy of such a suggestion, Count.”
Behind the tolerant smile of a strong-willed man who holds, or thinks he holds, a winning card, there was a look of intense, hardly disguised admiration in Zarka’s eyes. The girl had at last roused herself to face him; instead of mere avoidance she had sounded now a bold note of open defiance. He realized that, perhaps he had expected it, anyhow he was prepared to meet it.
He replied quietly, veiling the sentiment her outburst had called up—
“It is most unfair,” he said insinuatingly, “that you should be the victim of an unfortunate suspicion; particularly hard that the crime of which you stand accused is simply that of exciting in this man an admiration which you were unable to return. My dear Fräulein, it must often have been your fate—and will be—to commit that offence, if it be one.” As she was not looking at him, he saved himself the trouble of pointing his compliment with one of his characteristic smiles. “But in this case,” he went on suavely—“you will, I am sure, forgive my hinting at it—have not Prince Roel’s friends perhaps something more to go upon than a mere suggestion?”
She turned upon him sharply, and met the insinuating smile she so detested.
“What do you mean, Count?”
He spread out his hands deprecatingly.
“I mean,” he continued in the same quiet voice, subdued because the words themselves carried sting and point sufficient, “have they not evidence of a pre-determination on the Prince’s part not to survive your cruelty?”
“My cruelty!” she cried, and her face went white. “What evidence?”