“What are you going to do?” she repeated mechanically.
“Oh, nothing for the present. After that it will depend.”
“On what?”
“On whom I shall see in the supper-room at one o’clock precisely.”
“You will see the Scarlet Pimpernel, of course. But you do not know him.”
“No. But I shall presently.”
“Sir Andrew will have warned him.”
“I think not. When you parted from him after the minuet he stood and watched you, for a moment or two, with a look which gave me to understand that something had happened between you. It was only natural, was it not? that I should make a shrewd guess as to the nature of that ‘something.’ I thereupon engaged the young gallant in a long and animated conversation—we discussed Herr Glück’s singular success in London—until a lady claimed his arm for supper.”
“Since then?”
“I did not lose sight of him through supper. When we all came upstairs again, Lady Portarles buttonholed him and started on the subject of pretty Mlle. Suzanne de Tournay. I knew he would not move until Lady Portarles had exhausted the subject, which will not be for another quarter of an hour at least, and it is five minutes to one now.”