my hands if I let you
rest here, when there are so many who wish to dance with you." He threw
a pipe into her lap, and at the same moment a pipe sounded from the
other side of the room.

"This is a conspiracy!" exclaimed the girl. "I will not have it! I am
not going to dance any more." She put the pipe back into his hands; he
placed it to his lips, and sounded it several times, and then dropped it
into her lap again with a laugh, and vanished in the crowd.

"That little fellow is a rogue," said the princess. "But he is not so
bad as some of them. Monsieur," she cried in French to the
fair-whiskered, tall mask who had already presented himself before Lily,
"I will not permit it, if it is for a trick. You must unmask. I will
dispense mademoiselle from dancing with you."

The mask did not reply, but turned his eyes upon Lily with an appeal
which the holes of the visor seemed to intensify. "It is a promise," she
said to the princess, rising in a sort of fascination. "I have forbidden
him to unmask before supper."

"Oh, very well," answered the princess, "if that is the case. But make
him bring you back soon: it is almost time."

"Did you hear, Mask?" asked the girl, as they waltzed away. "I will only
make two turns of the room with you."

"Perdoni?"

"This is too bad!" she exclaimed. "I will not be trifled with in this
way. Either speak English, or unmask at once."

The mask again answered in Italian, with a repeated apology for not
understanding. "You understand very well," retorted Lily, now really
indignant, "and you know that this passes a jest."

"Can you speak German?" asked the mask in that tongue.

"Yes, a little, but I do not choose to speak it. If you have anything to
say to me you can say it in English."

"I cannot understand English," replied the mask, still in German, and
now Lily thought the voice seemed changed; but she clung to her belief
that it was some hoax played at her expense, and she continued her
efforts to make him answer her in English. The two turns round the room
had stretched to half a dozen in this futile task, but she felt herself
powerless to leave the mask, who for his part betrayed signs of
embarrassment, as if he had undertaken a ruse of which he repented. A
confused movement in the crowd and a sudden cessation of the music
recalled her to herself, and she now took her partner's arm and hurried
with him toward the place where she had left the princess. But the
princess had al