He paused awhile, noting with pleasure that his bold glance had brought a glow to Jacqueline's delicate throat and chin. Then he murmured softly:
''Tis only when the strangers have departed that we, who have the privilege of intimacy, can call on the ladies to unmask.'
'Even you, my dear de Landas,' broke in d'Inchy curtly, 'must be content to wait until I decide to grant you special favours. Shall we go below, Madame?' he added, turning to Jacqueline. 'The banquet is spread for nine o'clock.'
Jacqueline, who had scarce uttered a word since the gentlemen entered the room, appeared almost as if she were waking from a trance. Her eyes had a vague, expectant look in them which delighted de Landas, for his vanity at once interpreted that look as one caused by his presence and his own fascination. But now that she encountered her guardian's cold, quizzical glance, the young girl pulled herself together, laughed lightly and said with a careless shrug of her pretty shoulders:
'Nay, then, Monseigneur; 'twill not be my fault if we are late, for I've been dressed this past half-hour, and oh!' she added with a mock sigh of weariness, 'Ye gods! How bored I have been, seeing that I detest all these modish Parisian clothes almost as much as I do a mask, and have chafed bitterly at having to don them.'
'You would not have been bored, Madame,' riposted de Landas with elaborate gallantry, 'had you but glanced once or twice into your mirror, for then you would have been regaled with a sight which, despite the cruel mask, will set every man's heart beating with joy to-night!'
She received his formal compliment more carelessly than was her wont, and he, quick to note every shade of indifference or warmth in her demeanour, frowned with vexation, felt a curious, gnawing pang of jealousy assail him. Jacqueline was so young, so adulated, so very, very beautiful! This was not the first time of late that he had asked himself whether he could hope to enchain her lasting affection, as he had done her girlish fancy ... and had found no satisfactory answer to the bitterly searching question. But she, equally quick to note his moods, quite a little in awe of his outbursts of jealousy, which she had learned to dread, threw him a glance which soon turned his moodiness into wild exultation. After which, Jacqueline turned to Nicolle, who was standing by, gazing on her young mistress in rapt adoration.
'Give me my fan and gloves, dear Colle,' she said.
And when Colle had given her these things, she put on her gloves and, holding her fan in one hand and the edge of her satin skirt with the other, she made a low curtsey before her guardian, looking shy and demure in every line of her young figure, even though the mask hid the expression of her face.
'Does my appearance,' she asked, 'meet with Monseigneur's approval?'