It was a huge monk, who had all the evening been searching for the white lute-string which she wore.
Some weak souls yield to omens and ill-starred presages, but heroic mortals overcome them. So far from being discouraged by the ill-luck of his penny-tossing, Burleigh was but the more firmly determined to press his suit. Tucking Flossy under his arm, he led her out of the press, and found solitude behind a stand of plants in the back hall.
"I have been trying all the evening to find you," he said. "Did I not do well to make out the lute-string dress?"
"Oh, wonderfully!" she answered, imitating him in pulling off her mask. "Dear me, how hot it is! These masks are so roasting!"
"They are close," he assented. "Look here," he continued with sudden vehemence. "I dare say you'll be angry,—you'll have a right to be,—but I love you, and I want you for my wife!"
"Mercy!" exclaimed Flossy, much as if she had been shot.
An opening among the plants let a beam of light fall upon his honest, manly face; and, as he leaned eagerly towards Flossy, his clear eyes seemed to look into the very depth of her being.
"Don't you care for me?" he pleaded. "I have loved you"—
He left his sentence incomplete, and caught her into his arms, to the great detriment of the lute-string dress. He insisted always that he saw permission in her face; but she quite as strenuously averred that she gave him no answer, and that her face could have expressed nothing but indignant surprise. But in any case they forgot the world in general and the company present in particular, until they heard people going away, and were astonished to find that supper with its unmasking had passed by, and that it was long after midnight.