And they did get it out of her; and Maria had more put upon her, and less of kind words and scarcely better food than with the charcoal-burners. But she took it all in silence and patience, and no complaint passed her lips. She had no fixed duties, but one called her here and another there; she was at everyone’s bidding, but she did her best to content them all.
Then came the Carneval; and on the last three days every servant had license to don a domino and dance at the king’s ball. What an opportunity for Maria Wood! After serving in her unbecoming disguise with so much endurance and perseverance for now a full year, here was one day on which she might wear a becoming dress, and enjoy herself according to the measure of her age and sex, and due position in the world.
All the household, all royal as it was, was in a hubbub of confusion. No one was at work—no one at his post; and there was no one to notice that Maria Wood was absent, like the rest.
Locking herself into the loft which served her for a sleeping-place, Maria not only came out of her wooden disguise, but took out of it the garment woven of the stars of heaven—a most convenient dress for the occasion. At a masqued ball no one can recognise anybody else, except by a guess suggested by familiar characteristics which the domino fails to disguise. But no one at the king’s court was familiar with the characteristics of Maria Wood; and wherever she passed the whole company was in an excitement to know whose was the elegant figure shrouded in such a marvellous costume. But there was so much majesty in her air, that no one durst ask her to dance or so much as approach her.
Only the king himself felt conscious of the right to offer to lead her to the dance; and she, who had not forgotten how handsome he was, and how kind he had been on the night that his huntsmen had nearly frightened her to death in the forest, right willingly accepted the favour. But even he was so awed by her grace and dignity, that, charmed as he was with her conversation, and burning to know her style and title, he yet could not frame the question that would ascertain whence she had come.
Very early in the evening, while the other masquers reckoned the amusement was only beginning, Maria, with characteristic moderation, chose an opportunity for withdrawing unperceived from the ballroom.
It will readily be imagined that the next night every one was full of curiosity, and the king most of all, to know whether the lady in the starry dress would appear again; and the more that, though everybody had been talking of her to the exclusion of everyone else the whole intervening day through, no one could offer a satisfactory conjecture as to who she could possibly be.
While all eyes were full of expectation, accordingly, the second evening, suddenly and unannounced there appeared in their midst a form, graceful and mobile like hers they had so much admired, but draped in a still more dazzling dress (for Maria this night wore her garment woven of moonbeams); and it was only the king who had the certainty that it was really the same person.
‘Why did you take away all the light of our ball so early last night?’ inquired the king, as they were dancing together.
‘I have to be up early, and so I must go to bed early,’ replied Maria.