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I had to keep up the farce of assumed disinclination, however, and was meditating the best line to take when an interruption came.

The door was opened, and a servant announced—“M. Paul Drexel.”

A flush of extreme annoyance mounted to Helga’s face at the entrance of the new-comer, who was the reverse of a pleasant-looking man. He was about forty years of age; short, broad-shouldered, inclined to corpulence, awkward and ungainly in figure. His features were coarse and Jewish in character; he had beady, twinkling, stealthy eyes, and his manner suggested a mixture of truculence and cunning.

Altogether he looked entirely out of place in Helga’s drawing-room, and I wondered what on earth could have brought him there, a wonderment which became genuine astonishment when he advanced with as much confidence as if he were the master of the house, and said in Russian—

“Good-evening, Helga. You see I have come after all. Is this the company you said would engage you?” He turned to me with a questioning, half suspicious, and rather insolent glance.