"No," she laughed, pleasure and excitement mingling rather dangerously in her mood. "Nothing of the sort, I assure you; though one of my ancestors was tried for witchcraft at Salem. Cousin Tom sent me this advertisement, and I knew at once that it must be you." The advertisement she showed him was cut from a New York paper, and called, with a detailed description of the personal appearance of the missing man, for tidings of one Thomas Wainwright, of Baltimore, supposed to have perished in the wreck of the Sound steamer, and whose large estate was unsettled. Tom read it over with mingled feelings. "Bah!" he said. "When I get home I shall only have to look over a file of the daily papers to read my obituary. Fortunately I have been back from India so few years that they cannot say a great deal about me." "_De mortuis_," returned Columbine, smiling. "They will only say good of you. I congratulate you on having found your name." "I had it before you told me," he said. He took her hands in his and looked at her tenderly. "I have all my past, too," he went on. "I am free; I have nothing to hide; nothing stands between us. Will you be my wife, Columbine?" She grew pale as ashes; then flushed celestial red; but her eyes did not flinch. "I trust you utterly," she answered him. "And I love you no less." Interlude First AN EPISODE IN MASK. AN EPISODE IN MASK. [_Scene:--A balcony opening by a wide, curtained window from a ball-room in which a masquerade is in progress. Two maskers, the lady dressed as a peasant girl of Britany and her companion as a brigand, come out. The curtains fall behind them so that they are hidden from those within._] _He._ You waltz divinely, mademoiselle. _She._ Thank you. So I have been told before, but I find that it depends entirely upon my partner. _He._ You flatter me. Will you sit down? _She._ Thank you. How glad one is when a ball is over. It is almost worth enduring it all, just to experience the relief of getting through with it. _He._ What a world-weary sentiment for one so young and doubtless so fair. _She._ Oh, everybody is young in a mask, and by benefit of the same doubt, I suppose, everybody is fair as well. _He._ It were easy in the present case to settle all doubts by dropping the mask. _She._ No, thank you. The doubt does not trouble me, so why should I take pains to dispel it? Say I am five hundred; I feel it. _He._ What indifference; and in one who waltzes so well, too. Will you not give me another turn? _She._ Pardon me. I am tired. _He._ And you can resist music with such a sound of the sea in it? _She._ It is not melancholy enough for the sea. _He._ Is the sea so solemn to you, then? _She._ Inexpressibly. It is just that--solemn. It is too sad for anger, and too great and grave for repining; it is as awful as fate. _He._ I confess it never struck me so.