frightened you for anything in the world."

"Why are you wearing that dress?"

He laughed, and pointed to where, behind him on the ground, lay a long
gray cloak, upon which had been tossed a white mask. "I'm on my way to the
masquerade;" he answered, with an airy gesture in the direction of the
violins. "I'm an Incroyable, you see; and I had the costume made from my
recollection of a sketch of your great-uncle. I saw it a long time ago in
your library."

Miss Carewe's accustomed poise was quite recovered; indeed, she was
astonished to discover a distinct trace of disappointment that the
brilliant apparition must offer so tame an explanation. What he said was
palpably the truth; there was a masquerade that night, she knew, at the
Madrillon's, a little way up Carewe Street, and her father had gone, an
hour earlier, a blue domino over his arm.

The Incroyable was a person of almost magical perceptiveness; he felt the
let-down immediately and feared a failure. This would not do; the attitude
of tension between them must be renewed at once. "You'll forgive me?" he
began, in a quickly impassioned tone. "It was only after you sang, a dream
possessed me, and--"

"I cannot stay to talk with you," Miss Betty interrupted, and added, with
a straightforwardness which made him afraid she would prove lamentably
direct: "I do not know you."

Perhaps she remembered that already one young man had been presented to
her by no better sponsor than a white cat, and had no desire to carry her