"Alas!" murmured Kitty, as we hurried up the steps, "there's a hundred chances to one we don't see him again! It'll be just God's mercy and nothing else, if he gets into the house. There goes the constable now, and the men"---- "Which way?" I gasped. "Down toward the garden. Heaven help him! If he only sees them in time! Take my arm, Miss, and come in; we can't stop now to see whether they meet him; they're watching us on the piazza." I needed all the support of Kitty's arm as I entered the hall; the glare of the lights made me sick and faint, and she hurried me to a chair. "Don't wait a minute to attend to me," I murmured, "hurry upstairs." "It won't do yet; everybody is looking at us; I must sit down and talk to you awhile." A gentleman, Mr. Mason, approached me, and began to rally me upon keeping up my incognito so long, the rest of the maskers, he said, had consented to reveal themselves. "Say you won't unmask till supper," whispered Kitty. I mechanically repeated the words. Others came up to talk to me, there was evidently some curiosity felt about me; I knew that I was not recognized. I can hardly tell how I found answers to the questions put to me; the questioners must have been satisfied with very vague and senseless responses, if mine satisfied them. Kitty, at once prompt and self-possessed, relieved me, and kept up her own part, disguising her voice, and answering readily. Unable to control my agony at the delay any longer, I exclaimed suddenly: "I feel faint, won't you (turning to the black domino) won't you get the bottle of salts I left in the dressing-room?" Her height and step nearly betrayed her; and Mr. Mason catching sight of a woman's foot as she ran up the stairs, proclaimed the fact, and excited a general exclamation of wonder. "Never saw a character better sustained--everybody had thought it a man all the evening." I listened for the opening of the window in the west room overhead, then for Kitty's step as she stole out. I I heard it through all the din of music and of voices. Then came a dreadful suspense; how to get rid of the people, how to get on the piazza, I could not tell. Victor might even now be waiting for me, a moment more might be too late; the officers might at any instant return. Just then supper was announced, and, "now you have promised to unmask, now you must tell us who you are," exclaimed the gentlemen. "Not while you are all here," I exclaimed, "I will not take off my mask to-night unless you all go to supper and leave me."