While Sybil stood behind the group, she saw her husband and her rival
precede every one to the door.
"Names, if you please, sir?" inquired the usher with a bow.
"Harold the Saxon and Edith the Fair," answered Mr. Berners in a low
voice.
"Mr. Harry Claxton and Miss Esther Clair!" shouted poor old Abe at the
top of his voice as he opened wider the door to admit his unknown master
and the lady.
"Name, sir, please?" he continued, addressing the next party.
"Rob Roy Macgregor."
"Mr. Robert McCracker!" shouted the usher, passing in this mask, and
passing immediately to the next with, "Name, missus, please?"
"Fenella the dumb girl," murmured a very shy little maiden, whom the
usher immediately announced as "An Ell of a dumb girl!" And so on, he
went, making the most absurd as well as the most awful blunders with
ladies' and gentlemen's names, as announcing the "Grand Turk" as Miss
Ann Burke; for which last mistake the poor old man was not much to
blame, as the subject was but a little fellow in a turban and long gown,
whom Polonius naturally took to be a woman in a rather fantastic female
dress. But when he thundered forth a "Musketeer" as a "mosquito," and a
"Crusader" as a "curiosity," and "Joan of Arc" as "Master Johnny Dark,"
he was quite unpardonable.
Meanwhile Sybil had entered the room, which was blazing with light and
resounding with music. As the guests were now nearly all assembled, the
gentlemen selected partners and opened the ball with a grand promenade
to the music of the grand march in "Faust."
Introductions are of course unnecessary at private masquerades, as well
as impracticable at all such festivals; so when the ghastly mask "Death"
came up and offered his skeleton arm to Sybil for the promenade, she
unhesitatingly accepted it, supposing him all the while to be one of her
invited guests.
But in joining the promenaders, he entered the circle at a point
immediately in the rear of Harold the Saxon, and Edith the Fair. Death
kept his eye on the two, and speaking in a low voice, inquired of his
companion; "Beautiful mask! though we may not yet discover ourselves to each other,
yet we are at liberty to form a guess of the identity of our friends
here?"
"Yes," answered Sybil, in a low voice. She scarcely understood what she
had been asked, or what she had answered; for her whole attention was
absorbed in watching her husband and her rival, who were walking
immediately before her--so close, yet so unconscious of her presence; so
near in person, yet so far in spirit!
"--As, for instance, lovely mask," continued Death, "I think I know this
'Fair Edith' as the beautiful blonde who is staying here with our
hostess. Am I not right?"