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 friends to work together. I am glad to hear it." He spoke with a sort of blustering bluntness that he may have intended for an engaging frankness.

"I do not know that I am much concerned what opinion you take the trouble to form about me," I answered, coldly.

"Hang it all, man, can't you see I have come in a friendly spirit to talk over together the things we have in common? Why do you receive me like this?" He spoke sharply, and, I thought, angrily; and when I did not answer immediately, he added with a laugh that had no mirth in it: "You don't suppose I am in the habit of hawking round my friendship?"

"Have I suggested anything of the kind?"

"You make it very difficult for me to enter into things with you."

"I have seen you twice, sir," I answered deliberately. "The first time at the ball the other evening, when you were good enough to scowl at me, and yesterday at the Princess Christina's house, when your words were a kind of scowl expressed audibly. We Englishmen are not accustomed to read such actions as the preliminaries of a friendship."

He started at the word Englishmen, and his eyes lighted with swift anger. Obviously he hated everything English; nor did I wish him to make an exception in my case. I think he read as much in my eyes.

"You Englishmen take very queer views of many things," he answered, after a short pause. "But I thought you were more a Roumanian, and thus a friend of my country?"

"I have the honour to be a Roumanian Count," I said, tersely.

"Do you wish to quarrel with me, Count Benderoff?"