, I supposed you were
sworn confederates."

"What's the good of masked balls, if you can't talk to people you've
never met?" she submitted. "I've never met him, but I'm one of his
admirers. I like his little poems. And I'm the happy possessor of a
portrait of him. It's a print after a photograph. I cut it from an
illustrated paper."

"I really almost wish I _was_ Victor Field," he sighed. "I should feel
such a glow of gratified vanity."

"And the Countess Wohenhoffen," she added, "has at least twenty
portraits of the Invisible Prince--photographs, miniatures, life-size
paintings, taken from the time he was born, almost, to the time of his
disappearance. Victor Field and Louis Leczinski have countenances as
like each other as two halfpence."

"An accidental resemblance, doubtless."

"No, it isn't an accidental resemblance," she affirmed.

"Oh, then you think it's intentional?" he quizzed.

"Don't be absurd. I might have thought it accidental, except for one or
two odd little circumstances. _Primo_, Victor Field is a guest at the
Wohenhoffens' ball."

"Oh, he _is_ a guest here?"

"Yes, he is," she said. "You are wondering how I know. Nothing simpler.
The same _costumier_ who made my domino, supplied his Chinese dress. I
noticed it at his shop. It struck me as rather nice, and I asked whom it
was for. The _costumier_ said, for an Englishman at the Hotel de Bade.
Then he looked in his book, and told me the Englishman's name. It was
Victor Field. So, when I saw the same Chinese dress here to-night, I
knew it covered the person of one of my favorite authors. But I own,
like you, I was a good deal surprised. What on earth should a little
London literary man be doing at the Countess Wohenhoffen's? And then I
remembered the astonishing resemblance between Victor Field and Louis
Leczinski; and I remembered that to Louis Leczinski the Countess
Wohenhoffen had been a second mother; and I reflected that though he
chose to be as one dead and buried for the rest of the world, Louis
Leczinski might very probably keep up private relations with the
Countess. He might very probably come to her ball, incognito, and safely
masked. I observed also that the Countess's rooms were decorated
throughout with _white lilac_. But the white lilac is the emblematic
flower of the Leczinskis; green and white are their family colours.
Wasn't the choice of white lilac on this occasion perhaps designed as a
secret compliment to the Prince? I wa