“And think, I’ve already been twelve years on the stage—a life hard enough, I can tell you!”
“Yes, I know,” remarked the Count. “But you’ll forget all about your friend Commander Kennedy some day, I expect, and marry a wealthy man.”
Ella’s eyebrows contracted for a few seconds.
“Well—perhaps,” she said. “But I may yet marry Mr Kennedy, you know!”
Count Ernst Ortmann smiled—a hard evil expression upon his heavy lips. He held Seymour Kennedy in distinct suspicion.
Indeed, when Ella had gone and he was standing with old Drost in the dining-room, he remarked:
“I still entertain very grave suspicions regarding that fellow Kennedy. Couldn’t you keep Ella away from him? Could not we part them somehow? While they are in love a distinct danger exists. He may learn something at any moment. My information is that he is particularly shrewd at investigations, and he may suspect. If so, then the game might very easily be up.”
“Bah! Do not anticipate any such contretemps. He knows nothing—take that from me. We have nothing whatever to fear in that direction,” Drost assured him. “If I thought so I should very soon take steps to part them.”
“How would you accomplish that?”
Theodore Drost’s narrow face—broad at the brow and narrow at the chin—puckered in a smile.