No festivity has quite the vast and varied glitter of a _veglione_. It takes a whole city to make a party so big and bright. And the last _veglione_ of the season is rather brighter than the rest, as if the spirit of revelry, inexhausted at the end of Carnival, made haste to use itself up in fireworks before the cold dawn of Ash Wednesday. The opera-house is cleared of its rows of seats, the stage united to the parquet by a sloping floor. Every one of the boxes, rising tier above tier in a jeweled horseshoe, offers the sight of a merry supper-party, with spread table, twinkling candelabra, flowers, gala display. Crowding floor and stage and lobbies, swarm the maskers. In the center of the great floor the _corps de ballet_, regiment of sylphs in tulle petticoats and pale-pink tights, performs its characteristic evolutions to the pulsating strains of the opera orchestra. The public dances in the remaining space--dances, promenades, and plays pranks, the special diversion of the evening being to "intrigue" some one. They are heard speaking in high squeaks, in bass rumbles, in any way that may disguise the voice. Many are in costume,--Mephistos, Pierrots, Figaros, Harlequins, but the most are in simple domino. When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at the back of the box, slips a domino over her ball-dress, a mask over her features, and goes forth unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm she leans. The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural objects of the maskers' impertinences, their part the rather barren amusement of trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or puzzle, them, and wittily to parry personalities often more pointed than the drawing-room permits. The party in Aurora's box was large for the size of the box. She had gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things with which to feed them. There were the Fosses, Charlie with all the Hunt girls, Landini, Lavin, the American doctor, the American dentist, and Gerald. Also Manlio. The Fosses had brought him. He had returned from furlough some time before. It was known now to everybody that he was the _fidanzato_ of Brenda Foss. There was no talk of his leaving the army; on the contrary, he was rumored to have prospects of early advancement to the grade of captain; wherefore the general public took it for granted that the bride's parents were providing the indispensable marriage portion. Aurora's eyes, at a moment when Manlio's attention was elsewhere, rested on him with a brooding, shining look. The symptoms of a great happiness, though modestly muffled, were plain in his face. The Beautiful One was coming back in the spring, already near, to marry him.