He made way for me with a "_Permettez, mademoiselle!_" and I went, thinking I would go and ask Ben at the door if he knew where she was. Ben didn't know, but he said that a woman who was standing near the door, letting the cool night-wind blow in under her mask and telling people how she enjoyed it, was Lady Scilly. She was standing almost in the street, with a man, who was George. There are tall bushes near our door, rather pretty at night, though they belong to the next-door gardens. Ben didn't know till I told him; he is the stupid child that doesn't know its own father. He told me what they had been saying. She had begun by asking him if he approved of women wearing ospreys? There's a silly thing to ask, for what could he say but that he didn't, being a poet? Then she made a face, prettyish, out of habit, forgetting that it couldn't be seen under her mask, and whined, "Oh, I'm so sorry, it is the least wicked thing I do!" "For beautiful women--I assume you are a beautiful woman, for purposes of dialogue," George said; "there is no law of humanity. Go on. Pluck your red pleasure from the teeth of pain." ... "Yes, I am very wicked," she said. "My impulses are cruel. Sometimes, do you know, I am almost afraid of myself." "As I am--as we all are," said George. "Why, am I so very terrible? What do I do to you? Speak to me. Why are you so guarded, so unenterprising?" She cast a stage glance round. It was very funny, but George knew that Ben was the commissionaire and Lady Scilly didn't, so she couldn't think why George was so stiff. In fact, if George had only known it, he was bi-chaperoned--if that is the way to put it--for there was me too. Ben and I enjoyed it hugely, but I don't think George did, because he could not quite make a fool of himself before Ben. Besides, it was draughty out there, and George takes cold easily. He kept trying to get her to come in, and she pretended to be babyish and wouldn't. She said she had never been out in the open street at midnight in her life before, and she thoroughly enjoyed it; that it was a Romeo and Juliet night, or some rot of that sort, and that she might never have such an opportunity again. But poor George felt he could not play Romeo, because of Ben, and there was nothing to climb, except a lamp-post that led to nothing, since Juliet was standing in the gutter below it. George looked at his watch, and said, "In ten minutes they will give the signal for the removal of masks. Had you not better----?" "I shall leave the party," she said. "I shall walk straight home! It will spoil all the effect of this enchanted night, if we have to meet again in the glare of----" "The lights are shaded," George put in. "I alluded to the glare of publicity!" she said. "I shall ask this commissionaire," she said, "to call my carriage----"