He was alarmed, and clumsily helped her to loosen them. Her small face, released from the mask, looked shrunk and pinched like a squirrel's in its thrown-back hood. The pink glow upon it from the lamp was in horrible contrast with its agonized expression.
'What is it? what is it?' said Doll, in distress nearly as great as her own, taking her little clenched hand, and holding it, still clenched, in his large grasp. 'Are you ill?'
She shook her head impatiently.
'Would you like—shall I—fetch Mr. Loftus?'
She winced as if she had been struck.
'No,' she gasped; 'I will not see him—I will not see him!'
A change came over Doll's face. Involuntarily, his hand tightened its clasp on hers.
* * * * *
'These entertainments,' said the Bishop to Mr. Loftus, as they paused for a moment in the gallery, and looked down into the ballroom, which was now rapidly refilling with gaily-dressed women and pink and black coats, 'are, I believe, typical of English country life. They are—ahem!—the gallery seems conducive to conversation; it is, in fact, a—er—whispering-gallery.' Here he turned, smiling, to Mr. Loftus. 'Perhaps Mr. Doll has hardly reached the stage at which he will call upon me to officiate—just so; we will go down by the other staircase—but I trust, though I might be in the way at present, that my services may be required a little later on.'