"Ah!" He looked at Van Ingen with interest. "So you also are making the running! But, my dear boy, are you not--forgive me!--are you not--ah--young?" Van Ingen flushed to the roots of his hair with sheer rage. It was the very taunt which Doris had flung in his teeth earlier in the evening. "I am twenty-five," he replied stiffly. "So old!" exclaimed the count. "Permit me to say that you do not look it! I," he continued thoughtfully, "am thirty-five. And Miss Doris is older than both of us." "She is exactly twenty-two." The count shook his head. "Never believe it, my friend. She is as old as Eve. And as eternally young as Spring!" He turned to the other with a slight laugh. "You are my rival, then? You will do your best to baffle me, to thwart this great desire?" "That is understood!" Van Ingen retorted. In spite of himself he was coming to admire the man's coolness and apparent simplicity of nature. "Excellent! Well, then, it would appear that we are enemies. I have been counted an indifferently good enemy," he remarked. He held out his hand. "Good-night! Let us part friends, though we meet as sworn foes in the morning." Van Ingen appeared not to perceive the outstretched hand. "Good-night," he said coldly. He lifted his hat and turned away. The count looked after him thoughtfully. "Odd!" he muttered. "But I fancy that youngster. He _is_ like her." With a few swift steps he overtook his late companion. "Mr. Van Ingen, forgive my insistence. Believe me, it surprises you no more than it does me. Let me venture to give you a word of advice." Van Ingen interrupted him fiercely. "Let me give you a word first," he exclaimed. "The plain advice of a very plain American. Briefly, mind your own business and permit me to attend to mine." The count looked at him fixedly for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders. "So be it, my friend," he murmured, turning away. "It was but a momentary weakness." He drew out his note-book, which afterwards became so famous, and wrote: "To spare is to become a coward." CHAPTER IV WHICH RELATES TO A NEWSPAPER SUICIDE The next morning, at the stroke of ten, Van Ingen, faultlessly clad, sprang from his hansom in front of the American Embassy and tossed the astonished jarvey a sovereign. "Because it's a fine morning," explained Van Ingen gaily, "and also because something nice is going to happen to-day." He stood for a moment, drawing in the fresh April air, sweet with the breath of approaching spring. He caught the scent of lilacs from an adjoining florist shop. Overhead, the sky was faintly blue. He was feeling fit, very fit indeed--he made passes with his cane at an imaginary foe--and he was to lunch with Doris and her father at the Savoy. That was the "something nice"--with perhaps a stroll later along the Embankment with Doris alone. He turned and took the stairs three at a time, whistling softly to himself.