"Hush! do not swear, for she will make you break your oath. She is your wife. She will make you forsake me, or--she will do me a fatal mischief.
Oh, I shiver whenever she comes near me. Ah, if you had seen her eyes as I saw them through her mask to-night. They were lambent flames! How they glared on me, those terrible eyes!"
"It was your fancy, dear Rosa; no more than that. Come, shake off all this gloom and terror from your spirit, and be your lovely and sprightly self!"
"But I cannot! oh, I cannot! I feel the burning of her terrible eyes upon me now."
"But she is not even in the room."
(Here Sybil slipped away to a short distance, and joined a group of masks as if she belonged to them.)
"But I shiver as if she were near me now."
Lyon Berners suddenly looked around and then laughed, saying:
"But there is no one near you, dear Rosa, except Death."
"Death!" she echoed with a start and a shudder.
"Why, how excessively nervous you are, dear Rosa," said Lyon Berners laying his hand soothingly upon her shoulder.
"Oh, but just reflect what you have just said to me. "No one near me but Death!" Death near me!" she repeated, trembling.
"Poor child, are you superst.i.tious as well as nervous? It was the mask I meant. The mask that was Sybil"s partner in the quadrille which we danced with them," laughed Lyon Berners.
"Oh, yes, I know. And they stood opposite to us. So that we danced with them more than with any one else! And my own hand turned cold every time it had to touch his. What a ghastly mask!"
"Yes, indeed. I wonder any man should choose such a one," added Lyon.
"Who is he? Who is that mask?"
"Indeed I do not know. Some one among our invited guests, of course.
But he maintains his incognito so successfully, that even I, who have discovered most people in the room, have not been able to detect his ident.i.ty. However, at supper all will unmask, and we shall see who he is."
"Look, is he still near me?" inquired Rosa, shaking as if with an ague.
Mr. Berners turned his head, and then answered:
"Yes, just to your left."
"Oh! please ask him to go away! I freeze and burn, all in one minute, while he is near!"
That was enough for Lyon Berners. He arose and went to Death, and said:
"Excuse me, friend. No offence is meant; but your rather ghastly costume is too much for the nerves of the lady who is with me. I do not ask you to withdraw to some other part of the room; but I ask you whether you will do so, or whether I shall take the lady away from her resting-place?"
"Oh! I will withdraw! I know that my presence is not ever welcome, though I am not always so easily got rid of!" answered Death as, with a low inclination of his head, he went away.
"Oh! I breathe again! I live again!" murmured Rosa, with a sigh of relief.
"And now you are sufficiently rested, the music is striking up for a lively quadrille, and so, if you please, we will join the dancers and dance away dull care!" said Lyon Berners, rising and offering his arm to Rosa Blondelle.
She arose and took his arm.
(Sybil, in her little Puritan"s dress moved after them.)
He led her to the head of a set that was about to be formed.
"Oh! there she is!" suddenly exclaimed Rosa.
"Who?"
"Sybil."
"Where?"
"There!"
And Rosa pointed to one of the doors, at which Beatrix Pendleton, in Sybil"s disguise, was just entering the room.
"No matter! See! she has taken another direction from this, and will not be near you, dear child; so be at rest," said Lyon Berners soothingly.
"Oh! I am so glad! You don"t know how I fear that woman," replied Rosa.
"But you did not use to do so!"
"No! not until to-night! To-night when I met her terrible eyes," said Rosa.
"Come, come, dear! Cheer up," smiled Mr. Berners, encouragingly, as he took her hand and led her to the order--"Forward four!"
The dance began, and Sybil heard no more; but she had heard enough to convince her, if she had not been convinced before, of her guest"s treachery and her husband"s enthrallment.
She went and sat down quietly in a remote corner, and "bided her time."
And waltz succeeded quadrille, and quadrille waltz. At the beginning of every new dance, some one would come up and ask for the honor of her hand, which she always politely refused--taking good care to speak in a low tone, and disguised voice. At length Captain Pendleton came up, and mistaking her for his sister, said:
"Sulking still, Trix?"
Not venturing to speak to him, lest he should discover his mistake, she shrugged her shoulders and turned away.
"All right! sulk as long as you please. It hurts no one but yourself, my dear," exclaimed the Captain, sauntering off.
She saw Beatrix Pendleton, in her dress, moving merrily through the quadrille, or floating around in the waltz. She heard a gentleman near her say:
"I thought that lady never waltzed. I know she refused me and several others upon the plea that she never did."
And she heard the other lightly answer:
"Oh, well, ladies are privileged to change their minds."