“Madame Demidoff!” he said, evidently not pleasantly surprised.
“Herself,” she replied laughingly; “do not assume an astonishment, so badly justified. I am not a Viennese grande dame, and coming to an opera ball is not the most unpardonable of my eccentricities.”
“Yes! but alone?”
“Not alone,” she rejoined, still merry, “since you are here to protect me from my worst perils, and lend me a helping hand in the most dire difficulties.”
“Allow me to start on these most enviable functions by finding your carriage for you,” he said, a trifle absently.
She bit her lip, and tried a laugh, but this time there was a soupçon of harshness in the soft foreign notes.
“Ah, Iván, how you must reckon on my indulgence, that you venture so unguardedly on so ungallant a speech!”
“Was it ungallant?”
“Come, what would be your judgment on a young man, one of our jeunesse dorée, who, meeting a lady at the opera ball, offers, after the first two minutes, to find her carriage for her.”
“I should deem it an unpardonable sin, and punishable by some nameless tortures, if that lady happened to be Madame Demidoff,” he said, striving to make banal speeches to hide his evident desire for immediate retreat.