Entrancing strains of music echoed through the splendid halls, tempting light feet to the gay whirl of the dance. The splendid drawing-rooms, opening into each other, looked like long vistas of fairy-land, in the glow of light, and the beauty shed around by countless flowers overflowing great marble vases everywhere. The gay masquers moved through the entrancing scene, chatting, laughing, dancing, as though life itself were but one long revel. In the banqueting hall the long tables were loaded with every luxury under the sun, temptingly spread on gold and silver plates. Nothing that taste could devise, or wealth could procure, was lacking for the enjoyment of the guests; and pleasure reigned supreme. It was almost the hour for unmasking, and Colonel Carlyle stood alone, half hidden by a crimson-satin curtain, looking on idly at the gay dancers before him. He felt weary and dull, though he would not have owned it for the world. He hated to feel the weakness and feebleness of old age creeping over him, as it was too surely doing, and affected to enter into all the gaieties of the season, with the zest and ardor of a younger and stronger man. He had for a few moments felt dull, sad and discontented. The reason was because he had lost sight of his beautiful idol whom no mask could hide from his loving eyes. She had disappeared in the moving throng a little while ago, and now he impatiently waited until some happy chance should restore her to his sight again. "I am very foolish over my darling," he said to himself, half proudly, half seriously. "I do not believe that any young man could worship her as passionately as I do. I watch over her as closely and jealously as if some dread mischance might remove her from my sight at any moment. Ah, those dreadful two years in which I so cruelly put her out of my life and starved my eyes and my heart--would that I might recall them and undo their work! Those years of separation and repentance have sadly aged me!" He sighed heavily, and again his anxious gaze roved through the room. "Ah, there she is," he murmured, delightedly. "My beautiful Bonnibel! how I wish the time for unmasking would come. I cannot bear for her sweet face to be hidden from my sight." At that moment a small hand fluttered down upon his arm. He turned abruptly. Beside him stood a woman whose dark eyes shone through her concealing mask like coals of fire. She spoke in a low, unfamiliar voice: "I know you, sir. Your mask cannot hide Colonel Carlyle from my eyes." "Madam, you have the advantage of me," he answered politely. "Will you accord me the privilege of your name?" "It matters not," she answered, with a low, eerie laugh, whose strangeness sent a cold thrill like an icy chill along his veins, "I am but a wandering sibyl; I claim no name, no country." "Perhaps you will foretell my future," he said, humoring her assumption of the character.