near, he saw that sets were already
forming for the minuet.

He recognised Dysart, glorious in silk and powder, perfectly in his
element, and doing his part with eighteenth-century elaboration;
Kathleen, tres grande-dame, almost too exquisitely real for counterfeit;
Delancy Grandcourt, very red in the face under his mask, wig slightly
awry, conscientiously behaving as nearly like a masked gentleman of the
period as he knew how; his sister Naida, sweet and gracious; Scott,
masked and also spectacled, grotesque and preoccupied, casting patient
glances toward the dusky solitudes that he much preferred, and from
whence a distant owl fluted at intervals, inviting his investigations.

And there were the Pink 'uns, too, easily identified, having all sorts
of a good time with a pair of maskers resembling Doucette Landon and
Peter Tappan; and there in powder, paint, and patch capered the
Beekmans, Ellises, and Montrosses--all the clans of the great and
near-great of the country-side, gathering to join the eternal hunt for
happiness where already the clarionets were sounding "Stole Away."

For the quarry in that hunt is a spectre; sighted, it steals away; and
if one remains very, very still and listens, one may hear, far and
faint, the undertone of phantom horns mocking the field that rides so
gallantly.

"Stole away," whispered Duane in Kathleen's ear, as he paused beside
her; and she seemed to know what he meant, for she nodded, smiling:

"You mean that what we hunt is doomed to die when we ride it down?"

"Let us be in at the death, anyway," he said. "Kathleen, you're charming
and masked to perfection. It's only that white skin of yours that
betrays you; it always looks as though it were fragrant. Is that
Geraldine surrounded three deep--over there under that oak-tree?"

"Yes; why are you so late, Duane? And I haven't seen Rosalie, either."

He did not care to enlighten her, but stood laughing and twirling his
sword-knot and looking across the glittering throng, where a daintily
masked young girl stood defending herself with fan and bouquet against
the persistence of her gallants. Then he shook out the lace at his
gilded cuffs, dropped one palm on his sword-hilt, saluted Kathleen's
finger-tips with graceful precision, and sauntered toward Geraldine,
dusting his nose with his filmy handkerchief--a most convincing replica
of the bland epoch he impersonated.

As for Geraldine, she was certainly a very lovely incarnation