When a lady wishes to descend among the crowd she, in the darkness at the back of the box, slips a domino over her 208ball-dress, a mask over her features, and goes forth unknown to all save the cavalier on whose arm she leans.
The only uncovered faces belong to gentlemen. These look often a little foolish, a little bored, because the uncovered faces are the natural objects of the maskers’ impertinences, their part the rather barren amusement of trying to divine who it is endeavoring to intrigue, or puzzle, them, and wittily to parry personalities often more pointed than the drawing-room permits.
The party in Aurora’s box was large for the size of the box. She had gone on inviting people, then brought hampers and hampers of good things with which to feed them. There were the Fosses, Charlie with all the Hunt girls, Landini, Lavin, the American doctor, the American dentist, and Gerald.
Also Manlio. The Fosses had brought him. He had returned from furlough some time before. It was known now to everybody that he was the fidanzato of Brenda Foss. There was no talk of his leaving the army; on the contrary, he was rumored to have prospects of early advancement to the grade of captain; wherefore the general public took it for granted that the bride’s parents were providing the indispensable marriage portion.
Aurora’s eyes, at a moment when Manlio’s attention was elsewhere, rested on him with a brooding, shining look. The symptoms of a great happiness, though modestly muffled, were plain in his face. The Beautiful One was coming back in the spring, already near, to marry him.
Aurora’s affectionate look was just tinged with regret. She had suffered a disappointment in connection with Manlio. An obstinate and uncompromising woman beyond 209the ocean, when invited to join in a harmless conspiracy, had preferred to do actually, to the tune of eight thousand dollars, what the grasping creature should have been satisfied with merely appearing to do. The happiness that pierced through Manlio’s calm, like a strong light through pale marble, came to him from the bride elect’s aunt, and Aurora felt robbed.
But Mrs. Foss’s hand found hers under the table and gave it a warm squeeze, whereupon Aurora’s heart swelled in a way it had of doing. When such a dilation took place, something simultaneously happened to her eyes: the surrounding world was revealed to them as “too lovely for anything.” Dimples declared her joy.
“Won’t somebody have something more?” she asked, with the spoon in her hand poised over a bowl still half full of chicken mayonnaise.
But every one was done with eating; all were in haste to go down on to the floor and find amusement, perhaps adventure, amid the fluctuating, fascinating crowd.
The box was fairly deserted when the door opened again, and the eyes of those left in it, turning to see who entered, were met by two unknown maskers.