The last words fell distinctly on Sibyl's ears, and at that second the music ceased with a crash, and a gong boomed out, engulfing all other sounds. It was twelve o'clock. A bell somewhere just above them was counting out twelve slow strokes, just too late—just ten seconds too late.
She leaned back sick and shivering.
She did not realize that the crash and the tolling bell were part of the evening's programme. They seemed to her the natural result of the words she had just heard. If she had been crossed in love at Lisbon before the earthquake, she would have regarded that upheaval as the immediate consequence of her lacerated feelings.
'Look, look!' said the woman; 'they are unmasking.'
A confused sound of laughter and surprise and recognition, and a widespread hum of conversation, came up to them.
Everyone was streaming out of the gallery, and in the ballroom there was a vast turmoil, as of hiving bees, and a throng at every door.
'Shall I take you to the cloak-room to leave your mask and domino?' said Doll, turning to her at last, from watching without seeing it what was passing below. He took off his velvet mask as he spoke. The sullen wretchedness of his face fitted ill with the pointed rakish ears which still surmounted it.
She did not answer. He saw that the outstretched hand still on the balustrade was tightly clenched.
'Mrs. Loftus,' he said. 'Sibyl! what is it? Are you ill?'
She tore off her mask, and, as if she were suffocating, plucked with trembling hands at the gold ribbon that fastened her hood and domino.