There was something faintly familiar in the elusive voice. “I may go, Aunt?”
The elder Miss Grayson gave reluctant consent. Masked balls, where strange gentlemen with fanciful sobriquets might claim introductions were not to her taste, but there was no help for it. Miss Letty went away on the Unknown’s arm.
“I have an odd feeling I know you, sir,” she confided, looking up with a child’s smile. “Please tell me, do I?”
He shook his head; she thought his smile intriguing beyond words. “How should you know l’Inconnu, mademoiselle?”
This was Romance indeed. “But you know me, do you not?” They were dancing now, and she asked the question as she sank to the curtsey.
They came together again. “Ah, that is another matter entirely,” said the Black Domino.
She pouted. “And you won’t tell me! So many people I’ve guessed; oh, at once! There is Tony, for instance.”
She nodded towards a massive figure in a grey domino. “There is no mistaking him, to be sure. And I think I know which is Mr Merriot. I thought that lady in the blue domino was his sister, but of that I am not sure. Do you know, sir?”
“No, mademoiselle, but then I do not want to know. I am content to have found Miss Grayson.”
She blushed, and turned away her head.