I have had an exciting evening, but it has had its compensation.

Here is something for you.

I had a bit of a fight for it, baron--look out that it doesn't get into the wrong hands again." He had taken a small packet of torn papers from his pocket while he was speaking; now he put it into the baron's hand--not wholly without a certain sense of gratification, however, in the excitement and delight which the act called forth; for no man is utterly devoid of personal vanity, personal pride in his achievements, and this man was no less human than his kind.
He let the tumult of excitement and joy wear itself out; he suffered the baron's embraces--even the two rapturous kisses the man planted upon first one and then the other of his cheeks--he endured Mlle.

Athalie's exuberant hand-clapping and hand-shaking and the cyclonic and wholly Gallic manner in which she deported herself when comparison with the fragments which the baron had still retained proved beyond all question that these were indeed the missing portions of the all-important document; and not until these things were over did he so much as look at Ailsa Lorne again.
She had taken no part in the general excitement, moved not one foot from where she had been standing from the first.

Even when Athalie danced over and hugged her and showed the important fragments; even when she reproved her with a wondering, "Ah, you strange Anglais--you stone-cold Anglais! Is it possible that you can have blood in your veins and yet take wondrous things like this so calmly ?"--even then, she merely smiled and remained standing just as she still was; her pallor not one whit lessened, her reserve but the merest shadow less apparent than it had been before.
Cleek chose that moment to walk over to her, to lift his eyes to hers, and to stand looking at her questioningly.