ons; his beautiful, tantalizing, and mysterious lady-love;
his errand and its probable consequences, all were forgotten; and
Ormiston thought of nothing or nobody in the world but himself and La
Masque. La Masque! La Masque! that was the theme on which his thoughts
rang, with wild variations of alternate hope and fear, like every other
lover since the world began, and love was first an institution. "As it
was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be," truly, truly it is
an odd and wonderful thing. And you and I may thank our stars, dear
readers, that we are a great deal too sensible to wear our hearts in
our sleeves for such a bloodthirsty dew to peck at. Ormiston's flame was
longer-lived than Sir Norman's; he had been in love a whole month, and
had it badly, and was now at the very crisis of a malady. Why did
she conceal her face--would she ever disclose it--would she listen to
him--would she ever love him? feverishly asked Passion; and Common Sense
(or what little of that useful commodity he had left) answered--probably
because she was eccentric--possibly she would disclose it for the same
reason; that he had only to try and make her listen; and as to her
loving him, why, Common Sense owned he had her there.

I can't say whether the adage! "Faint heart never won fair lady!" was
extant in his time; but the spirit of it certainly was, and Ormiston
determined to prove it. He wanted to see La Masque, and try his fate
once again; and see her he would, if he had to stay there as a sort of
ornamental prop to the house for a week. He knew he might as well look
for a needle in a haystack as his whimsical beloved through the streets
of London--dismal and dark now as the streets of Luxor and Tadmor in
Egypt; and he wisely resolved to spare himself and his Spanish leathers
boots the trial of a one-handed game of "hide-and-go-to-seek." Wisdom,
like Virtue, is its own reward; and scarcely had he come to this
laudable conclusion, when, by the feeble glimmer of the house-lamps, he
saw a figure that made his heart bound, flitting through the night-gloom
toward him. He would have known that figure on the sands of Sahara, in
an Indian jungle, or an American forest--a tall, slight, supple figure,
bending and springing like a bow of steel, queenly and regal as that of
a young empress. It was draped in a long cloak reaching to the ground,
in color as black as the night, and clasped by a jewel whose glittering
flash, he saw even there; a