a moment, while the others waited
likewise. Within the eye-holes of their masks the eyes of the intruders
glittered in the glassy, baffling way of eyes behind masks.

Aurora, unused to the mode of procedure at a _veglione_, asked
helplessly in a whisper of Landini:

"What shall I say to them?"

He spoke for her then, in Italian, because he thought it probable that
these were Florentines who had come into a strange box for a lark.

"Good evening," he said. "Will you speak, or sing, and let us know what
we can do for your service?"

The bravo, lifting two long hands in loose and torn black gloves,
rapidly made signs, like the deaf and dumb.

"You speak too loud," said Gerald. "We are deafened. Let the lady
speak."

The black domino, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gesture of
black-gloved hands excusing the limitations of a bird, answered by a
simple caw.

Aurora now found her tongue and her cue:

"And is it yourselves?" she burst in rollickingly. "Proud to meet you!
Will you partake?"

With a hospitable sweep of the arm, intelligible to speakers of any
language, she made them free of her supper-table, where the candles
still twinkled over an appetizing abundance.

Gerald watched sharply, saying to himself: "If they accept, we shall at
least see their chins."

But upon the invitation _Sparafucile_, with farcical demonstrations
of greed, reached forth his long fingers in the flapping gloves, seized
cakes, white grapes, mandarins, nuts, and stuffed them into his wide
pockets; while the black domino grasped the neck of a bottle of
champagne and possessed herself of a glass. A caw of thanks issued from
the black beak, and from the bravo, as with their booty the two
retreated to the door, there proceeded, as unexpected as upsetting, a
whoop of rejoicing so loud that those near him fell back as if from the
danger of an explosion. In the midst of this consternation the maskers
were gone.

"My land! did you hear that?" cried Aurora, who had clapped both hands
over the pit of her stomach. "Goodness! he's scared the liver-pin out of
me! Who d'you suppose they were?"

Landini lost not another minute before asking Mrs. Hawthorne if they
should go down together for a turn.

Gerald had been on the point of asking the same thing. He had almost
uttered the first word when Landini anticipated him. He felt a sharp
prick of annoyance with himself for not having been quicker as much as
with Landini for having been so