"I can't help being timid," he said grinning genially, "it's my nature."
So gratified was the count by his unusual showing at the game that he did not notice how close Pauline kept to Alfred Anthony. It was nervous work for Anthony and he answered the girl abruptly trying to keep her attention on the game.
"You are two men," she said presently when Hentzi and his employer were a little ahead of them. For a moment Trent was thoroughly alarmed. What did she know?
He had always known that it was a fallacy to assume because he had seen none on his midnight wanderings that he had been unobserved. In a vast house such as Castle Radna there were nooks and crannies where frightened servants or timid guests might hide from him momentarily only to denounce him later.
"What do you mean?" he asked teeing up her ball. He had not answered her immediately.
"That you are two men. There may be three of you but I have seen two already. There is the timid, servile creature accepting a coin or a blow and eating with the servants as among his equals. I hate that man. The other is a creature that every now and then looks out of your eyes like a bird of prey. It is the man who drives the great car over the mountain passes as though it were on a smooth boulevard. It is the man who beat big Peter Sissek to the earth with tight lips and eyes that flashed. That is a man I could love."
He could feel her arm brush against his own. There was a caressing tenderness in her voice.
"Tell me, which is the real you?"
Anthony Trent looked straight ahead of him.
"If you slice your ball," he said, "you'll get into the rough. Golf, like other things is largely a matter of self control."