Von Lindheim introduced us, and we three went off to the Baroness’s box.
“I hope you don’t mind, old fellow; but I can’t throw a chance away to-night. The Baroness is good style and great fun.”
When we entered the box we found it occupied by two people. A man was in animated conversation with the Baroness. He had his back turned to me, and seemed to be finishing a good story, for they were both laughing as the man rose and made way for us. Von Lindheim presented me to the Baroness, a good-looking widow, still young, and evidently a woman of fashion. We shook hands, and she said a few graceful words to me, then, with a slight gesture, introduced me casually to her companion.
“Count, you know Herr von Lindheim? Mr. Tyrrell, Count Furello.”
Turning to bow, I found myself face to face with the man who had accosted me by Duke Johann’s chapel the night before, the man who had forced Von Orsova to his death. I knew him at once, despite the fact that both my former views of him had been imperfect; the feline eyes that glittered from the dark recess of the box were unmistakable. And a curious-looking man he was; a man whom at first sight and without my previous knowledge of him, one would hardly have known whether to set down as attractive or detestable, but certainly interesting.
He had a mass of straight chestnut hair brushed back from a high narrow forehead and falling in a thick even wall over the back of his head. His eyes were dark and alert, set a trifle too close together, his nose was long and thin, and his mouth drawn back by what seemed an habitual muscular contraction into a set grin, making a straight slit across his face in no way hidden by the small reddish moustache which was turned upwards well away from it. No doubt he, too, recognized me; however, he gave no sign of it, only made me a courtly bow with a few murmured words of compliment. I turned again as the Baroness spoke.
“Is it out of compliment to Mr. Tyrrell’s nationality that you have been too much absorbed in Shakespeare to notice your friends in the house, Herr von Lindheim?”
He made a—to me—obvious effort to throw off his worry, as he replied:
“No, indeed; I cannot claim such ultra politeness. Harff is at his very best to-night.”
“You are giving yourself a poor character as a diplomatist, Herr von Lindheim,” said Count Furello, “in confessing that even the excitement of superb acting can blind you to the realities of life around you.”