"Never! no one, not even my wife, shall ever do that! I swear it by all my hopes of--" "Hush! do not swear, for she will make you break your oath. She is your wife. She will make you forsake me, or--she will do me a fatal mischief. Oh, I shiver whenever she comes near me. Ah, if you had seen her eyes as I saw them through her mask to-night. They were lambent flames! How they glared on me, those terrible eyes!" "It was your fancy, dear Rosa; no more than that. Come, shake off all this gloom and terror from your spirit, and be your lovely and sprightly self!" "But I cannot! oh, I cannot! I feel the burning of her terrible eyes upon me now." "But she is not even in the room." (Here Sybil slipped away to a short distance, and joined a group of masks as if she belonged to them.) "But I shiver as if she were near me now." Lyon Berners suddenly looked around and then laughed, saying: "But there is no one near you, dear Rosa, except Death." "Death!" she echoed with a start and a shudder. "Why, how excessively nervous you are, dear Rosa," said Lyon Berners laying his hand soothingly upon her shoulder. "Oh, but just reflect what you have just said to me. 'No one near me but Death!' Death near me!" she repeated, trembling. "Poor child, are you superstitious as well as nervous? It was the mask I meant. The mask that was Sybil's partner in the quadrille which we danced with them," laughed Lyon Berners. "Oh, yes, I know. And they stood opposite to us. So that we danced with them more than with any one else! And my own hand turned cold every time it had to touch his. What a ghastly mask!" "Yes, indeed. I wonder any man should choose such a one," added Lyon. "Who is he? Who is that mask?" "Indeed I do not know. Some one among our invited guests, of course. But he maintains his incognito so successfully, that even I, who have discovered most people in the room, have not been able to detect his identity. However, at supper all will unmask, and we shall see who he is." "Look, is he still near me?" inquired Rosa, shaking as if with an ague. Mr. Berners turned his head, and then answered: "Yes, just to your left." "Oh! please ask him to go away! I freeze and burn, all in one minute, while he is near!" That was enough for Lyon Berners. He arose and went to Death, and said: "Excuse me, friend. No offence is meant; but your rather ghastly costume is too much for the nerves of the lady who is with me. I do not ask you to withdraw to some other part of the room; but I ask you whether you will do so, or whether I shall take the lady away from her resting-place?" "Oh! I will withdraw! I know that my presence is not ever welcome, though I am not always so easily got rid of!" answered Death as, with a low inclination of his head, he went away. "Oh! I breathe again! I live again!" murmured Rosa, with a sigh of relief.