“Bravo! you’ll get there yet. They are quitting the bazaar, and she is close behind. Now watch me play a little side game.”
In an instant Wycherley has managed to pass around a table and meet the cloaked and veiled figure at the doorway. The execution of the maneuver is first-class. A bent pin or some such object in the lapel of his coat catches the floating veil, and for the second time inside an hour the Cairo Street fortune teller finds herself shorn of the gauzy covering that has been used to screen her features.
“I really beg pardon! too awkward of me, to be sure. You—why, can it be Miss Dorothy Cereal?” says the vagabond, with a look of well-simulated surprise.
The other hastily replaces the veil, but not before he notices the alarm and perturbation his pretended recognition has caused.
“No, no,” she mutters wildly; “it is one mistake, sir. I assure you.”
Then she darts out of the bazaar door like a frightened deer. Wycherley laughs softly to himself at his success.
“What do you think, now?” he asks of Aleck, who joins him outside.
“There can be no mistake about her identity. We have yet to learn whether this can be the Marda of the past, the mother whom Dorothy has been taught to believe dead.”
“I believe I have settled even that,” declares the actor. “Come, let us continue to keep them in sight while we talk.”
“You said something to her as you bowed with the grace of a Chesterfield. I was not near enough to hear what it was.”