Baroness Orczy

“ Then, when the carriage had left the opera house, with all its gaiety and tumult, behind, and she no longer could see Iván Volenski's figure at the foot of the wide stone stairs, she seemed to dismiss with an impatient sigh and a shrug any little touch of sentiment that may have lurked in her thoughts, and it was an impassive, slightly irritable grande dame who alighted out of the little elegant coupé, under the portico of one of the finest houses on the Kolowrátring. ”

“ The young man pulled himself together, and forced open his eyes and thoughts to wander away from the fiaker, which now appeared as a mere speck, to the graceful figure in front of him, who owned that musical voice and had called him by name.
"Madam Demidoff!" he said, evidently not pleasantly surprised.
"Herself," she replied, laughingly; "do not assume an astonishment, so badly justified. I am not a Viennese grande dame, and coming to an opera ball is not the most unpardonable of my eccentricities." ”

“ You must dog the old man's every footstep, and if he goes to the police, or sends any telegraphic message across to Petersburg, you must apprise me of it at once. Moreover, both outside the opera house, at thefiaker stations, ands at the various railways, you must glean what scraps of information you can relating to the flying odalisque and domino, or the fiaker that drove them. ”