w, pray?"

"By pulling off his mask," he answered--and put out his hand, as though
to do it. With his fingers almost on it, he paused.

I stood quite still. I felt perfectly sure he would not touch me; but,
if he did, I intended to knock him down. And I was not mistaken.
After a moment, he dropped his arm.

The woman laughed. "Your nerve failed--his didn't," she said dryly.

"Not at all, mademoiselle. I thought of a better way.--Observe."

He slowly drew the long narrow-bladed sword, that went with his
costume, and, taking the point in his left hand, bowed over it in mock
courtesy.

"Will monsieur have the extreme kindness to remove his mask," he said.

I admit I was a bit astonished. Surely, this was rushing things with a
vengeance--to deliberately raise a situation that meant either a fight
or a complete back-down by one of us. And, as he would scarcely
imagine I would do the latter, he must have intended to force a duel.

There might have been another reason, assuming that he was interested
only in my identity:--this procedure would have told him; for Moore
would not have dared draw sword on the Heir Presumptive. But I have
never thought such was his idea; for he must have been very well
satisfied, by this time, that none but an equal in rank would have
acted so toward him.

And, being convinced that it was I that fronted him, he had suddenly
seen an opportunity to accomplish in open fight what his hired assassin
had bungled. It is notorious that American officers know practically
nothing of the art of fence; what easier than to drive me into drawing
on him and, then, after a bit of play, to run me neatly through the
heart. What mattered it if he were the aggressor? It would be easy to
aver he had not known me--that I had chosen to insult him, and, having
refused to unmask and apologize, had suffered the consequences of my
own rashness and bad manners.

And, even suppose no one believed his story that he did not know me.
What mattered it? One does not execute the Heir Presumptive of Valeria
for murder. True, the King might rage--and a term of banishment to his
mountain estates might follow; yet, what trifling penalties for the end
attained. They would be only for the moment, as it were. But the
American would be dead--the Crown sure--the Princess still unmarried.

Truly, it was a chance which would never come again; and not to seize
it was to mock Fortune to her very face.

It takes far l