“What I require for my three hundred thousand roubles is that you shall make love—successful love, mark you—to a certain lady.”
Wilfrid gave a scornful laugh.
“I thought the enterprise was one demanding a high degree of courage!”
“And so it does. There’s great danger in it.”
“That makes it interesting. Where is this Lady Perilous to be found?”
“In the city of St. Petersburg.”
“Is the lady young or old?”
“She is in her twenty-third year.”
“Seven years my junior. Ill-favoured, perhaps, and therefore unable to obtain a suitor?”