Therefore when Rallywood, booted and spurred, passed up the hall, his entrance attracted every eye. He walked straight up to the Count at his distant window and saluting, spoke for perhaps a minute in a low voice.
At the first sentence Sagan swung round, his lowering face growing darker as he listened. Then, advancing to the head of the table prepared for the entertainment of the Duke, he called the attention of all present by striking it loudly with the riding-whip he carried.
An instant hush settled upon the room. Sagan glared round with waiting eyes, and in the pause the tsa broke in a crash upon the Castle front with the pebble-shifting sound of a breaker.
'I have to beg the favour of your attention for a moment,' the Count's words rang out. 'Captain Rallywood reports that an officer of his Highness's Guard is missing—Captain Colendorp. Inquiries have been made but he cannot be found. It seems that he was last seen leaving the billiard-room. If anyone in the hall can give us further information, will they be good enough to do so?'
Valerie raised her eyes to Rallywood, who stood behind the Count. As he met them the young man's stern face softened suddenly.
M. Blivinski, who happened to be sitting beside her, caught the exchange of looks, and for a moment was puzzled. Selpdorf's daughter? Well, well, the English are a wonderful people, he said to himself. Neither subtle nor gifted, but lucky. Lucky enough to give the devil odds and beat him! Here was Selpdorf laying his plans deeply and with consummate skill, while this pretty clever daughter of his was ready to give him away because a heavy dragoon of the favoured race smiled at her across a breakfast table. Pah! The ways of Providence are inscrutable; it remains for mortal men to do what they may to turn them into more convenient channels.
Then there was Counsellor, whose political importance could not be denied. Yet he did the bluff thing bluffly and said the obvious thing obviously, and blundered on from one great city to another, but blundered triumphantly! Still there were compensations. The good God had given the Russian craft and a silent tongue, and a facility for telling a lie seasonably.
Elmur was by a fraction of a second too late to see what the Russian had seen. Valerie was very white, but she was talking indifferently to M. Blivinski with her eyes fixed upon her plate. It was some time before she seemed to grow conscious of Elmur's gaze; a slight fleck of colour showed and paled in her cheeks, and then at length her long lashes fluttered up and the German perceived in the darkness of her eyes a trace of unshed tears.
'Mademoiselle, you are tired,' he said with solicitude.
'Yes,' she answered smiling. 'But we are going back to Révonde in a day or two, and then I will wipe out the remembrance of everything that has happened at Sagan from my mind forever!'