te are those two ladies."

But all this is an outside view; let us draw nearer and see what chance
may discover to us behind those four masks.

An hour has passed by. The dance goes on; hearts are beating, wit is
flashing, eyes encounter eyes with the leveled lances of their beams,
merriment and joy and sudden bright surprises thrill the breast, voices
are throwing off disguise, and beauty's coy ear is bending with a
venturesome docility; here love is baffled, there deceived, yonder takes
prisoners and here surrenders. The very air seems to breathe, to sigh,
to laugh, while the musicians, with disheveled locks, streaming brows
and furious bows, strike, draw, drive, scatter from the anguished
violins a never-ending rout of screaming harmonies. But the Monk and the
Huguenotte are not on the floor. They are sitting where they have been
left by their two companions, in one of the boxes of the theater,
looking out upon the unwearied whirl and flash of gauze and light
and color.

"Oh, _cherie, cherie!_" murmured the little lady in the Monk's disguise
to her quieter companion, and speaking in the soft dialect of old
Louisiana, "now you get a good idea of heaven!"

The _Fille a la Cassette_ replied with a sudden turn of her masked face
and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry
laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink
a little in her chair with a gentle sigh.

"Ah, for shame, tired!" softly laughed the other; then suddenly, with
her eyes fixed across the room, she seized her companion's hand and
pressed it tightly. "Do you not see it?" she whispered eagerly, "just by
the door--the casque with the heron feathers. Ah, Clotilde, I _cannot_
believe he is one of those Grandissimes!"

"Well," replied the Huguenotte, "Doctor Keene says he is not."

Doctor Charlie Keene, speaking from under the disguise of the Indian
Queen, had indeed so said; but the Recording Angel, whom we understand
to be particular about those things, had immediately made a memorandum
of it to the debit of Doctor Keene's account.

"If I had believed that it was he," continued the whisperer, "I would
have turned about and left him in the midst of the contra-dance!"

Behind them sat unmasked a well-aged pair, "_bredouille_," as they used
to say of the wall-flowers, with that look of blissful repose which
marks the married and established Creole. The lady in monk's attire
turned about in her chair