He sighed heavily, and again his anxious gaze roved through the room.
"Ah, there she is," he murmured, delightedly. "My beautiful Bonnibel! how I wish the time for unmasking would come. I cannot bear for her sweet face to be hidden from my sight."
At that moment a small hand fluttered down upon his arm.
He turned abruptly.
Beside him stood a woman whose dark eyes shone through her concealing mask like coals of fire. She spoke in a low, unfamiliar voice:
"I know you, sir. Your mask cannot hide Colonel Carlyle from my eyes."
"Madam, you have the advantage of me," he answered politely. "Will you accord me the privilege of your name?"
"It matters not," she answered, with a low, eerie laugh, whose strangeness sent a cold thrill like an icy chill along his veins, "I am but a wandering sibyl; I claim no name, no country."
"Perhaps you will foretell my future," he said, humoring her assumption of the character.
"It were best concealed," she said, and again he heard that strange, blood-curdling laugh.