“They are being rounded up,” she replied; “but indeed they count for nothing since he is dead. Mastrovin is not of great importance—not now, though once he was Evallonia’s evil genius. At the worst he was capable of murder in the dark. He was a survivor of old black days that the world is forgetting. He was a prophet of foolish crooked things that soon all men will loath.”
Her voice had risen, her face had flushed, she drew herself up to her slim height, and in that room, amid the debris of breakfast and with the sun through the long windows making a dazzle of light around her, the Countess Araminta became for a moment her ancestress who had ridden with John Sobieski against the Turk. To three deeply impressed listeners she expounded her creed.
“Mastrovin is dead,” she said; “but that is
