Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/329

 "Countess," mocked the man, "pardon—a thousand pardons!" He laughed harshly. "I give you until to-morrow evening, my countess!" he said.

"Now to interfere," thought O'Rourke.

As his shadow fell across the light oblong cast by the French window, the man turned; their eyes met.

O'Rourke knew him instantly. "Ah!" he said, bowing mockingly. "Good evening, Captain von Wever!" The German looked him up and down, twirling his mustaches.

"Good evening," he returned curtly, with a slight inclination of his head; and showed his back to O'Rourke.

The Irishman was no wise disconcerted. He remained standing in the window, inhaling the night air. For a moment the tableau held; then the woman took the initiative.

"Then," she said with a courteous little laugh,—the perfection of dramatic art,—extending her hand, "I may drop you a line to-morrow, Captain von Wever."

The German bent low as he took his dismissal. "I shall be desolated if I do not hear from you—by evening, Mrs. Dean," he said. "Good night." And he stalked down the steps and out to the street.

As for the woman, she hurried into the hotel. O'Rourke remained where he was, simulating admiration for the beauty of the night, but, in reality, busily trying to build a working hypothesis of the case out of the fragments he had overheard.

It was, admittedly, none of his affair. But the hunted look in the woman's eyes, as she had confronted her persecutor, had gone straight to O'Rourke's heart. She was a regally beautiful woman, worthily the bearer of her title; and she was in sore distress. As to that, there could be no doubt.

That fellow—this cashiered captain of the German army