"Nothing, positively."
"And my kisses? Think you that you felt them to-night for the very first time in your life?"
I started, and threw a hasty earnest glance on the person of the stranger; for there had indeed seemed magic in his kiss; and, while his lips were pressed to mine, I did think on Ponsonby, yet it was quite impossible that this should have been his lordship, who was I knew on the continent. Neither was it his voice nor his person.
"Tell me; did you several times receive money sent to you in a blank envelope by the post?"
"And was it you who——?"
"No, not I," interrupted the mask. "A mere accident made me acquainted with the circumstance, and yet I am always near you, I watch over you like a poor wretch, as I am," said he, seizing my hand, and, pressing his lips most ardently on every part of it, he arose from the supper table and was out of sight in an instant.
Before I could recover my astonishment, a man habited as a friar came towards me, and bending his head close to my ear said, in a tremulous voice, affected by real agitation, or, if otherwise, it was excellent acting, "Farewell, daughter! Every night I shall fervently pray that you and I may love each other in a better world!" It was the stranger-mask, who again vanished from my sight never to return.
I soon forgot this odd adventure; because I was not so radically vain as to conceive it possible that I could have excited such deep interest in the breast of any individual, as could thus survive hope and feed on air! "It is a mere masquerade-trick, got up to perplex me; so I'll e'en not puzzle about it," thought I.
"Have you everything that you require, at this end of the table?" said Meyler, passing close to me, and bowing with distant respect; for the table was so excessively crowded, and there were so many more housemaids in nearly the same costume as Fanny, that he passed her without observing his late tormentor, otherwise he might have guessed that I could not be far off.