"Trust you! Do you not know that you could charm any secrets of my own from me by a kind word? But this is no secret; it is the price of my birthright, received in honest sale and barter over a lawyer’s table. You _will_ believe me, won’t you?" She put out both her hands, with a gesture of enchanting frankness. "I will believe anything you tell me," she said; "I know you would not deceive me." He took the two little fluttering hands in his, and raised them one after another to his lips. "I see you are not wearing a sling," she remarked. "Is your arm healed?" "It was nothing; a broken collar-bone is quickly cured," he said carelessly, though delighted by even so slight a token of interest from her. "Besides, the person whose domino I borrowed, does not wear his arm in a sling, and I do not wish any difference to be remarked when he resumes it." "Then you are here in some one else’s disguise?" she said quickly. "What will you do when we unmask?" "At midnight the right face will be found under this mask," he replied. "What fun it would be!" she cried, with reckless gaiety, "if you were to stay until midnight and unmask with the rest! I wonder if any one would recognize you." "If the experiment will amuse you, I will stay and try it," said Robin tranquilly. Her own voice dropped almost to a whisper. "To amuse me?" she murmured. "What do you suppose would happen?" "Probably nothing at all; I am not so well known. At the worst, they would merely arrest me," he said. "Merely arrest you! and send you back to—prison, I suppose?" "Why, ’tis likely; and then, in a few days, you would be free—to marry some one you love." "I have had enough of marrying," she said petulantly. "Besides, had I loved one man, I would not have married another, even in jest." "Even in jest," he repeated. "Well, have a little patience and you may laugh as heartily as you please at this merry jest. When you are free, will you—" he hesitated—"I owe you a chance to make a better use of your freedom next time, yet it irks me to think that you will very likely throw it away again upon one who is not worthy of you." "Do you mean Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert?" she said. "Do not fear, I shall never marry him." "You will not?" he exclaimed eagerly. "You do not love him? Oh! you give me new life; I care little what becomes of me, if I am sure you will not marry Sir Geoffrey Beaudesert." "Hush-sh," she whispered, peering round in the dim twilight of their retreat; "I thought I heard a movement; suppose any one had overheard you!" He clapped his hand on his sword, but everything was still except the distant music and the approaching voices of another pair in search of solitude. "Let us go," said Prue, rising in a tremor and adjusting her mask. "I would not, for the world, have anything happen to you, and I fear you are not safe here; we have been incautious—prithee, begone from this house—"