One wore the costume of a bravo of old times, picturesque, disreputable, an operatic Sparafucile in tattered mantle and ragged plume. The other was in a black satin domino, and had the face of a crow, a great black beak projecting from a black mask.
They stood a little way inside of the door as if waiting to be addressed. There was silence for a moment, while the others waited likewise. Within the eye-holes of their masks the eyes of the intruders glittered in the glassy, baffling way of eyes behind masks.
210Aurora, unused to the mode of procedure at a veglione, asked helplessly in a whisper of Landini:
“What shall I say to them?”
He spoke for her then, in Italian, because he thought it probable that these were Florentines who had come into a strange box for a lark.
“Good evening,” he said. “Will you speak, or sing, and let us know what we can do for your service?”
The bravo, lifting two long hands in loose and torn black gloves, rapidly made signs, like the deaf and dumb.
“You speak too loud,” said Gerald. “We are deafened. Let the lady speak.”
The black domino, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gesture of black-gloved hands excusing the limitations of a bird, answered by a simple caw.
Aurora now found her tongue and her cue: