"Do you know my father, Count?" she asked presently--in a voice which could not conceal her apprehension. "To my family he is well known, to me not at all," was the frank reply. "I came to England to make my misfortune good; but now that I come your father is not here, Miss Romney." "Then he was not aware of your intended visit?" "Quite unaware of it." "You did not write to him?" "How should I write when I do not know the house in which he live?" "Then why do you say that he is not in London?" He looked at her with the triumphant eyes of a man who puts a master card upon the table. "I say that he is not in England because you are alone, Miss Romney." Etta bit her lips, but gave no other expression to her emotion. "A compliment to my discretion," she exclaimed with a little laugh; and then, as though serious, she said, "You will make me late for the theatre after all. Do please talk of all this to-morrow." He drew aside instantly. "Izard would never forgive me," he said; "let it be to-morrow as you wish--shall we say at twelve o'clock?" "Oh, by all means, at twelve o'clock to-morrow," she rejoined and upon that she ran up the stairs, and, entering her own room, locked the door behind her. Who was the man? How had he come thus into her life? She was utterly unnerved, amazed, and without idea. But she knew that she would go to the theatre no more. "And what will Mr. Izard say?" she asked herself blankly; "what will they all say?" Etta was ready both to laugh and to cry at that moment. Conflicting sentiments found her sitting upon her bed, a very picture of irresolution and dismay. The deeper truths of the night were not as yet understood by her, although the day for understanding could not be far distant. CHAPTER VII THE NONAGENARIAN She sat upon her bed for a little while, seemingly without purpose or resolution. The black muslin dress with the exquisite lace and suspicion of Cambridge blue about the neck, a dress in which she always went to the theatre, lay ready for her spread out upon the back of a chair. She used to say that it was the only good dress she had brought to London with her. Her desire had been to deceive herself with the pretty supposition that her own talent must earn luxuries or that they must not be earned at all.