What could he do?
He stole back to the stairs and listened. It was Marietta.
It was really a most embarra.s.sing job now, for there was no retreat, so he crept upon tip-toe into the room, of which the door stood ajar.
It was a bedroom, dimly lighted by an oil lamp.
A cursory glance showed him that this room had only been lately vacated, and that one or more of the ladies had been dressing here for the ball.
Within a few feet of the door was a looking-gla.s.s let into the wall as a panel, and reaching from floor to ceiling.
Mathias listened in great anxiety for the footsteps on the stairs, and every moment they sounded nearer and nearer.
"I hope she will not come in here," thought the robber, "else I shall have to make her sure."
He showed how he meant to "make her sure" by toying with the hilt of his dagger.
Mathias crouched down, and crept under the bed, just in time, as the pert young lady skipped into the room.
Her first care was to turn up the lamp, and by its light she looked about her.
"I think they might have taken me to the ball with them," she said, saucily shaking her curls off her face. "I should have looked better than some of them, I"ll be bound. I"m dead beat with fatigue. I"ve had all the work dressing them, and they are to get all the fun."
She was silent for some few minutes, and Mathias grew anxious.
What could be going forward?
He would vastly like to know.
Unable to control his curiosity, he peeped out, and then he saw pretty Marietta"s portrait in the long looking-gla.s.s panel.
She looked prettier than ever now, for, shocking to relate, the young lady was undressing.
Mathias was not to say a bashful man, so he did not draw back.
On the contrary, he stared with all his eyes.
Pretty Marietta little thought, as she stood before the gla.s.s, that such a desperate villain was watching every movement.
Marietta, wholly unconscious that she was watched by the vile brigand chief, walked up and down before the gla.s.s, shooting admiring glances at herself over her white and well rounded shoulders.
"Dress, and rank, and money do wonders," she said. "Why are we not all about equal? I"m as good as the best of them, I"m sure, and very much better looking."
With this mixture of feminine vanity and republican sentiments, she bustled about, putting the room a bit in order.
Now her first job was to put away several dresses.
The first of these was a short Spanish skirt of pink satin, with deep black lace flounces.
"I wonder how I should look in this?" she murmured.
She held up the dress beside her to test the colour against her complexion.
"Beautiful!"
Beautiful; yes, this was her frank opinion, and, really, we are by no means sure but that her own estimate was very near the mark.
On went the dress.
She strutted up and down, and then, when she had feasted her eyes enough upon her own loveliness, she plaited her hair, and, twisting it up into a rich knot behind, she stuck a high comb into it, and fastened the thick lace veil about her.
Mathias watched it all.
He gloated over that pretty little picture, and, shameless rascal!
chuckled to think how little she suspected his presence.
"There," she said, folding the veil about her head with the most coquettish manner, "if I don"t look the prettiest senorita alive, why, call me--call me anything odious--yes, even an Englishwoman--ha, ha, ha! How that would please my mistress!"
And then she figured about before the gla.s.s, and capered through a Spanish bolero with considerable grace and dexterity, while she sang an impromptu verse to an old air.
The verse was naturally doggerel, and maybe given in English as follows--
"Sweet Marietta, Rarely has been A sweeter or better Face or form seen; My chestnut tresses, And my Spanish fall, Would eclipse all the dresses At the masked ball.
Then why, Marietta.
Dally?--ah, no!
Pluck up, you"d better, Your courage and go!"
And as she came to the last line, this impudent little maid whirled round, spinning her skirts about her like a top.
Mathias was enraptured.
With difficulty he kept himself from applauding.
"She"d make her fortune upon the stage," he said to himself.
Marietta had made quite a conquest; a double conquest, it might almost be said.
The hidden robber was enraptured, and she was scarcely less pleased with herself.
"I"ll go," she said to herself, "Why should I not? They"ll never find it out; I can do just as Cenerentola (Cinderella) did, and who knows but that some prince might fall over head and ears in love with me? I can get back long before they do."
Out she skipped too, and tripped down the stairs.
She was off to the ball.
Little dreamt she that for the last half hour her life hung upon the most slender thread.
And now, the coast being clear, the three brigands prepared to carry out their plans.