“No, he didn’t meet a boojum,” she returned. “He went to England, and set up for an author. The Invisible Prince and Victor Field are one and the same person.” “Oh, I say! Not really!” he exclaimed. “Yes, really.” “What makes you think so?” he wondered. “I’m sure of it,” said she. “To begin with, I must confide to you that Victor Field is a man I’ve never met.” “Never met...?” he gasped. “But, by the blithe way in which you were laying his sins at my door, a little while ago, I supposed you were sworn confederates.” “What’s the good of masked balls, if you can’t talk to people you’ve never met?” she submitted. “I’ve never met him, but I’m one of his admirers. I like his little poems. And I’m the happy possessor of a portrait of him. It’s a print after a photograph. I cut it from an illustrated paper.” “I really almost wish I was Victor Field,” he sighed. “I should feel such a glow of gratified vanity.” “And the Countess Wohenhoffen,” she added, “has at least twenty portraits of the Invisible Prince—photographs, miniatures, life-size paintings, taken from the time he was born, almost, to the time of his disappearance. Victor Field and Louis Leczinski have countenances as like each other as two halfpence.” “An accidental resemblance, doubtless.” “No, it isn’t an accidental resemblance,” she affirmed. “Oh, then you think it’s intentional?” he quizzed. “Don’t be absurd. I might have thought it accidental, except for one or two odd little circumstances. Primo, Victor Field is a guest at the Wohenhoffens’ ball.” “Oh, he is a guest here?” “Yes, he is,” she said. “You are wondering how I know. Nothing simpler. The same costumier who made my domino, supplied his Chinese dress. I noticed it at his shop. It struck me as rather nice, and I asked whom it was for. The costumier said, for an Englishman at the Hôtel de Bade. Then he looked in his book, and told me the Englishman’s name. It was Victor Field. So, when I saw the same Chinese dress here to-night, I knew it covered the person of one of my favourite authors. But I own, like you, I was a good deal surprised. What on earth should a little London literary man be doing at the Countess Wohenhoffen’s? And then I remembered the astonishing resemblance between Victor Field and Louis Leczinski; and I remembered that to Louis Leczinski the Countess Wohenhoffen had been a second mother; and I reflected that though he chose to be as one dead and buried for the rest of the world, Louis Leczinski might very probably keep up private relations with the Countess. He might very probably come to her ball, incognito, and safely masked. I observed also that the Countess’s rooms were decorated throughout with white lilac. But the white lilac is the emblematic flower of the Leczinskis; green and white are their family colours. Wasn’t the choice of white lilac on this occasion perhaps designed as a secret compliment to the Prince? I was taught in the schoolroom that two and two make four.”