“That is a relief,” said the baroness; “but with all you gentlemen smoking, I was afraid that I should faint.”
“So?” said Sacovitch, with an altogether insolent disregard in his inquiry. “Let us get to business.”
“I am ready,” Roncivalli answered, throwing himself anew into the arm-chair.
“A moment,” said a voice, which I recognized as Constance Pleyel's; “it is very well to have the window open, but all the same we need not catch our death of cold. Will you be good enough, Signor Roncivalli, to lower the blind.”
The signor arose and obeyed her, and as he did so I could see his long figure between me and the whitewashed, lamplit ceiling of the room. Before another word was spoken Hinge touched me again upon the elbow, and I knew at once the meaning of his signal. We rose, both of us, silently to our knees, and each found a crevice through which he could command a view of the occupants of the room.
“The first thing, I take it,” said Sacovitch, “is to decide that the negotiations we are about to conclude are not likely to be broken by any betrayal on either side.”
“So far as I am concerned,” said Roncivalli, “my being here is guarantee enough. I am not risking my life for nothing, or, if I am, I shall know the reason why.”
At this moment Brunow broke in with an Italian-sounding phrase, and the baroness interrupted him.
“Speak English,” she said. “Herr Sacovitch has no Italian, and Miss Pleyel no German. English is the one language which is understood by all of us, and we may just as well have everything open and above-board.”
With one eye glued to the lower interstice of the Venetian blind, I saw the quintet all bowing and bobbing to each other at this with a Judas politeness which was altogether charming to look at. Roncivalli, with his back half turned towards me, was so near that I could have taken him by the hair. A little removed from him, on the right, sat the baroness, in a captivating little bonnet and gloves of pearl gray, smoothing one hand over the other on her silk-clad knees with a purring satisfaction in the charm of her own attire. At her side sat poor Constance Pleyel with a wineglass in her left hand, looking into its last spot or two as drearily as if she contemplated the dregs of her own wasted and weary life. Beyond her again, and almost facing me, just seen across Roncivalli's shoulders, sat Brunow, smoking at his ease, and toying with his eyeglass with the fingers of both hands. Sacovitch stood upright, his cigar balanced between his first and second fingers, dominating, or seeking to dominate, the whole party.