I seemed to catch a feline look in the face beside me, and thought that the unworthiness on which he had insisted so prettily might not be wide of the mark. We soon reached the private woods of the estate, and as the Count showed me the way and pointed out the view of the Monastery I wondered whether he knew how familiar I already was with it all. For I had come to be surprised at nothing in that network of spies and assassins.
Sport was plentiful; black game, ptarmigan, pheasants and hares fell in dozens before our guns. A pic-nic luncheon was brought out to us on the hills, and afterwards, when we had lighted our cigars, the Count chatted away gaily as though he had nothing more heinous than the death of a pheasant on his conscience. He explained how it was that his intended stay of but one day in the Geierthal had been prolonged. His sister, who lived at the Monastery with him, had been ill, and did not like being left alone in that out-of-the-way spot.
“You as a bachelor, my dear Herr Tyrrell,” he said, “are perhaps scarcely in a position to realize the subtle influence which womenkind exercise on our movements. Had I to choose men for a dangerous, a critical enterprise, I would take care to reject all those about whom I might suspect any feminine tie or entanglement. Most of the successful men who have made history have been those who either by nature or experience were able to take love as a mere episode, an interlude, to be swept off the stage when the scene was set for the next act of the real drama of their lives. Pardon me if I speak too strongly. You English are noted for a nice cultivation of the domestic virtues.”
“And yet we have made history.”
“True. But your greatest men would come under my category. And the very fact that Englishwomen are so domesticated shows that they have been kept in their proper place and not allowed to interfere in their husbands’ or lovers’ careers. You are men of action, and I fancy are often roused to it from a longing for change from the monotony of the very virtues on which you pride yourselves.”
I laughed and did not contradict him.
“Now you, my dear friend,” he went on, “your love of movement and adventure is, I venture to say, untinged by the thought of any woman.”
The green eyes were on me. He was watching me narrowly.
“Naturally,” I replied carelessly. “The age of knight-errantry is long past.”
“Is it?” The mouth was drawn back and the eyes glittered with a vicious sneer, at least so it seemed to me.