Listen! How very
odd! That vulgar girl is singing the castanet song in the second act at
this moment. Major! what opera is the young lady singing from?"

The Major was scandalized at this interruption. He bustled into the
back room--whispered, "Hush! hush! my dear lady; the 'Domino Noir'"--and
bustled back again to the piano.

"Of course!" said Lady Clarinda. "How stupid of me! The 'Domino Noir.'
And how strange that you should forget it too!"

I had remembered it perfectly; but I could not trust myself to speak.
If, as I believed, the "adventure" mentioned by Lady Clarinda was
connected, in some way, with Mrs. Beauly's mysterious proceedings on the
morning of the twenty-first of October, I was on the brink of the very
discovery which it was the one interest of my life to make! I held the
screen so as to hide my face; and I said, in the steadiest voice that I
could command at the moment,

"Pray go on!--pray tell me what the adventure was!"

Lady Clarinda was quite flattered by my eager desire to hear the coming
narrative.

"I hope my story will be worthy of the interest which you are so good as
to feel in it," she said. "If you only knew Helena--it is _so_ like
her! I have it, you must know, from her maid. She has taken a woman who
speaks foreign languages with her to Hungary and she has left the maid
with me. A perfect treasure! I should be only too glad if I could keep
her in my service: she has but one defect, a name I hate--Phoebe. Well!
Phoebe and her mistress were staying at a place near Edinburgh, called
(I think) Gleninch. The house belonged to that Mr. Macallan who was
afterward tried--you remember it, of course?--for poisoning his wife. A
dreadful case; but don't be alarmed--my story has nothing to do with
it; my story has to do with Helena Beauly. One evening (while she was
staying at Gleninch) she was engaged to dine with some English friends
visiting Edinburgh. The same night--also in Edinburgh--there was a
masked ball, given by somebody whose name I forget. The ball (almost
an unparalleled event in Scotland!) was reported to be not at all a
reputable affair. All sorts of amusing people were to be there. Ladies
of doubtful virtue, you know, and gentlemen on the outlying limits of
society, and so on. Helena's friends had contrived to get cards, and
were going, in spite of the objections--in the strictest incognito, of
course, trusting to their masks. And Helena herself was bent on going
with them, if