“I expect you’re agog to be off to claim her hand for the dance,” nodded Miss Letty sapiently.
Sir Anthony set down his empty glass. “I shall have to curb my impatience, then,” he said. “She’s not here.”
“Oh, is she not? I quite thought that was she in the blue domino. Who told you?”
“My Lady Lowestoft. She is kept at home with the migraine, as I believe.”
Letty was all concern. “Oh, poor Miss Merriot! But Mr Merriot is here, isn’t he? In the crimson domino? Yes, I thought so.”
“To say truth, it was he set me on your track. He told me he had sought you for the minuet only to find you spirited away by a man in a black domino.”
This brought the Unknown back to mind. “I would like to return to the ballroom, please,” said Letty decidedly.
But it was Mr Merriot who claimed her hand, and led her into the quadrille. Letty went with a good grace, but looked eagerly about her. The Unknown was nowhere to be seen, yet at the end of the dance he seemed to spring up out of the ground, as it were, and stood confronting Mr Merriot with that tantalising smile curling his lips. “The lady is promised to me,” he said; there was a faint note of mockery in his voice.
“On the contrary,” said Prudence. “The lady is mine.”
Really, a masked ball was a most fascinating entertainment. Miss Letty clasped her hands in the folds of her domino, and waited breathlessly.