He scrawled with his pencil on the card which he had appropriated. “Do you wish to get away and go home without waiting for the unmasking? I shall put you into a chair—say yes, and I shall be satisfied that I am right.” He pushed forward in advance of the others and thrust the card into Lady Bell’s hand. She glanced mechanically at the writing, with which she was not sufficiently acquainted for it to show the writer. But the electric shock was given at last, she had not the slightest fear of trusting herself with that domino. “Oh yes!” she drew a long sigh of relief and joy, standing still and speaking in her natural tones. “A swindle, a cheat, madam,” shouted the wildest of her train; “you decline to read our fortunes, and you answer the first question put to you by an interloper.” “Gentlemen,” interposed the domino, speaking in cold tones of indisputable authority and sober reason, “the lady is fatigued with the foolery, and wishes to go home. I suppose you do not interfere with the inclinations of your guests?” The gentlemen looked at each other and paused discomfited. “Sold, by Jove!” “I wish you joy, Sir George, of your successful rival.” “Devil take him, who can he be? never heard that my lady had any troublesome appendage—country cousin, parson in disguise, former husband come alive again, recent husband come to light.” Before the exclamations burst forth, the domino was leading the fortune-teller through the crowd, compelling a passage for her, to the door of the room, out into the vestibule, and down the stairs, at the foot of which they stopped, and he bade a watchman call a chair. Then Lady Bell took off her mask, and he pulled off his, and each smiled forgiving and forgiven in the face of the other, while the servants and their company thought the two a proper couple (though Harry was no Adonis), and on plain enough terms. But the lady and gentleman were not bent on one of the clandestine expeditions and frantic escapades in which masquerades frequently ended, since they would not set about it barefaced. Therefore the pair being manifestly honest, were left to themselves, unmolested by the kind souls that liked to look on them at a little distance. For anything more Lady Bell and Captain Fane were deficient to the apprehension of their more or less debased fellow-creatures in what are to them essential elements of thrilling interest—crime and shame. “I am so glad to get out of it—I shall never wish to go to a masquerade again. But could you find no better disguise than a common domino?” Lady Bell began to recover herself, and to pout the least in the world. “There were scores of dominoes like this,” she hinted regretfully, putting a little finger shyly on a fold of the objectionable domino.