Eckhardt nodded, half indifferently, half irritated, when the girl suddenly held the bronze mirror before his eyes and bade him look. But no sooner had he obeyed her behest, than with an outcry of amazement he darted forward and fairly captured his unsuspecting tormentor.
"Who are you?" he questioned breathlessly, "to read men's thoughts and the silent wish of their heart?"
But in his eagerness he probably hurt the girl against the iron scales, of whose jangling he had boasted, for she uttered a cry and called in great terror: "Rescue—Rescue!"
Before the words were well uttered the two Calabrians rushed towards them with drawn daggers. The mob also raised a shout and seemed to meditate interference. This uproar changed the nature of the dancer's alarm.
"In our Holy Mother's name—forbear—" she addressed the two Calabrians, and the mob, and turning to her captor, she muttered in a tone of almost abject entreaty:
"Release me—noble stranger! Indeed I am not what I seem, and to be recognized here would be my ruin. Nay—look not so incredulous! I have but played this trick on you, to learn if you indeed hated all woman-kind. You think me beautiful,—ah! Could you but see my mistress! You would surely forget these poor charms of mine."
"And who is your mistress?" questioned Eckhardt persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask, and still under the spell of the strange and to him inexplicable vision in the bronze mirror.
Persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask.
"Mercy—mercy! You know it is a grievous offence to be seen without my Cardinal melon," pleaded the girl with a return of the wiling witchery in her tones and attempting, but in vain, to release herself from Eckhardt's determined grasp.