Elmscott burst into a laugh. "The pretty Countess," said he, "would be more discreet did she but know you overlooked her." "But she does know," I returned. "She knows that I lodge in the house; she knows also that this room is mine." "Oh!" he exclaimed, in a tone of comprehension, "she knows that!" "Ay; and 'twas no further back than yesterday that she discovered it. I told her myself." Elmscott remained silent for a while, watching their promenade. Again they disappeared within the shelter of the wall; again they emerged from it, and again they promenaded some hundred paces and turned. "I thought so," he muttered; "'tis all of a piece." I asked what his words meant. "You remember the evening at the Duke's Theatre, when she caught sight of you across the pit? One might have imagined she would not have had you see her on such close terms with our friend; that she feared you might mistake her courtesy for proof of some deeper feeling." "Well?" I asked, remembering how he had chuckled through the evening. For such in truth had been my thought, and I had drawn no small comfort from it. "Well, she saw you long ere that; she saw you the moment she entered the box, before I pointed her out to you. For she looked straight in your direction and spoke to the Frenchwoman, nodding towards you." "No, it is impossible!" I replied. I recollected how her hand had fallen upon mine, and the musical sound of her words--"the occasion may come, too." "There is no trace of the coquette about her. This must be a mistake." "It is you who are making it. Add her behaviour now," he waved his hand to the window, "to what I have told you! See how the incidents fit together. Yesterday she finds out your room commands the Park, to-day she walks in Marston's company underneath the window, and backwards and forwards, mark that! never moving out of range. 'Tis all part of one purpose." "But what purpose?" I cried passionately. "What purpose could she serve?" "The devil knows!" he replied, with a shrug of his shoulders. "It is of a woman we are speaking--you forget that." I flung open the window noisily, in a desire to attract their attention and observe how the Countess would take our discovery of her interview. But she paid not the slightest heed to the sound. Elmscott made a sudden dash to the door. "Culverton!" he cried over the baluster. I tried to check him, for I had no wish that Culverton's meddlesome fingers should pry into the matter. I was too late, however; he entered the room, and Elmscott drew him to the open window. "Burn me, but 'tis the oddest thing!" he smirked.