Fraulein Hirsch had
made an excuse for leaving her with Lady Etynge--to be brought
up to the top of the house quite alone--and locked in. Fraulein
Hirsch had KNOWN! And there came back to her the memory of the
furtive eyes whose sly, adoring sidelooks at Count Von Hillern
had always--though she had tried not to feel it--been, somehow,
glances she had disliked--yes, DISLIKED!
It was here--by the thread of Fraulein Hirsch--that Count Von
Hillern was drawn into her mind. Once there, it was as if he stood
near her--quite close--looking down under his heavy, drooping lids
with stealthy, plunging eyes. It had always been when Fraulein
Hirsch had walked with her that they had met him--almost as if by
arrangement.
There were only two people in the world who might--because she
herself had so hated them--dislike and choose in some way to punish
her. One was Count Von Hillern. The other was Lord Coombe. Lord
Coombe, she knew, was bad, vicious, did the things people only
hinted at without speaking of them plainly. A sense of instinctive
revolt in the strength of her antipathy to Von Hillern made her
feel that he must be of the same order.
"If either of them came into this room now and locked the door
behind him, I could not get out."
She heard herself say it aloud in the strange girl's dreadful
voice, as she had heard herself speak of the party in the big
house opposite.
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