he_ is?" whispered
Death, leaning to Sybil's ear.

Sybil bit her lip and answered nothing.

"Ah! you do not know, or will not tell! Well, will you honor me with
your hand in this quadrille?" requested the stranger, with a bow.

Scarcely knowing what she did, for her eyes and thoughts were still
following her husband and her rival, Sybil bowed assent, and arose from
her seat.

Death took her hand and led her up to the same quadrille, at the head
of which Harold the Saxon and Edith the Fair stood, and he placed
himself and his partner exactly opposite to, and facing them.

Thus Lyon Berners for the first time in the evening was obliged to see
his wife, for of course he knew her by her dress, as she knew him by his
dress. She saw him stoop and whisper to his partner, and she surmised
that he gave her a hint as to who was their _vis-a-vis_, and gave it as
a warning. She fancied here that her confidence had been betrayed in
small matters as well as in great, and even in this very small item of
divulging the secret of her costume to her rival. And at that moment she
took a resolution, which later in the evening she carried out. Now,
however, from behind her golden mask she continued to watch her husband
and her rival. She noticed, that from the instant her husband had
observed his wife's presence, he modified his manner towards his
partner, until there seemed nothing but indifference in it.

But this change, instead of being satisfactory to Sybil, was simply
disgusting to her, who saw in it only the effect of her own presence,
inducing hypocrisy and deception in them. And the resolution that she
had formed was strengthened.

Meanwhile the only couple that was wanted to complete the quadrille now
came up, and the dance began.

Sybil noticed, in an absent-minded sort of a way, how very gracefully
her grim partner danced. And the thought passed carelessly through her
mind, that if in that most ghastly disguise his manner and address were
so elegant and polished, how very refined, how perfect they must be in
his plain dress. And she wondered and conjectured who, among her
numerous friends and acquaintances, this gentleman could be; and she
admired and marvelled at the tact and skill with which he so completely
and successfully concealed his identity.

She noticed too, in the superficial sort of manner in which she noticed
everything except the objects of her agonizing jealousy, that her
strange partner watched Rosa as