"Oh," exclaimed Serge, as if scandalised, but questioning with his beautiful, tender eyes.
"Really: a lover's tryst. And I must leave you to dress," insisted Lucio, still somewhat insolently.
"With whom—a lover's tryst?" murmured Serge de Illyne.
Lucio then looked at him with such intense and silent disdain on his face that the handsome Russian paled a little, turned on his heels, and departed, bowing his tall person with the statuesque figure, while Lucio Sabini, with an energetic movement of the shoulders, disguised as an offensive farewell, retired behind the screen to dress. His toilette was, more than usual, long and accurate. He had almost finished when he heard a voice calling him from the other side of the screen.
"Sabini, are you ready? Are you coming to dinner?"
Lucio put forth his head only from the screen and recognised Francis Mornand, a French gentleman, who had entered the room without Lucio being aware of it. Very thin, pallidly brown, with a clean-shaven face on which a calm and peaceful expression of correctness was permanently spread, with close-cropped hair, still black at the forehead, but slightly sprinkled with white at the temples, with monocle fixed without support, causing not a single wrinkle to the face, and dressed in austere elegance, when he was silent Francis Mornand had a more English than French appearance. But no one ignored the fact that he was one of the wittiest men in Engadine society, as of any society in which he happened to find himself. Everyone knew that, having lived thirty or forty years in the great cosmopolitan world, with an iron memory and an extraordinary adaptability of spirit, he was a conteur without a rival.
"I am nearly ready, Mornand," replied Sabini, with a smile, "but whither will you lead me?"
"First to dinner with me, then to our place."
"I must dine in haste, because it is late," replied Sabini, who had again gone behind his screen.
"As you like. Afterwards we will take a turn."