However, a considerable proportion of the house parties and guests of the neighbouring families, with such of the townspeople and others whose time was not specially valuable, remained for the closing spectacle. Much curiosity was aroused as to the nature of it.
‘Perhaps you can unfold the mystery of this duel which we are all taking about,’ said Annabel to St. Maur, with whom she had been discussing the costumes of the ball.
‘I happen to be in O’Desmond’s confidence,’ he replied; ‘so we may exchange secrets. Many years ago, in Paris, he fell across an old picture representing a fatal duel between Masks, after a ball. So he pitched upon it for representation, as a striking if rather weird interlude.’
‘What a strange idea! How unreal and horrible. Fancy any of the people here going out to fight a duel. Is any one killed?’
‘Of course, or there wouldn’t be half the interest. He proposes to dress the characters exactly like those in the picture, and, indeed, brought up the costumes from town with him. Your brother, by a coincidence, adopted one—that of a Red Indian. It will do for his second.’
‘Thoroughly French, at any rate, and only for the perfect safety of the thing would be horrible to look at. However, we must do whatever Mr. O’Desmond tells us, for years to come. I shall be too sleepy to be much shocked, that’s one thing. But what are they to fight with? Rapiers?’
‘With foils, which, of course you know, are the same in appearance, only with a button on the end which prevents danger from a thrust.’
‘Wilfred, my boy!’ had said O’Desmond, making a progress through the ball-room on the preceding night, ‘you look in that Huron dress as if you had neglected to scalp an enemy, and were grieving over the omission. Do the ladies know those odd-looking pieces of brown leather on the breast fringe are real scalps? I see they are. You will get no one to dance with you. But my errand is a selfish one. You will make a principal man in that “Duel after the Masquerade” which I have set my heart upon getting up to-morrow.’
‘But in this dress?’
‘My dear fellow, that is the very thing. Curiously, one of the actors in that weird duel scene is dressed as a Huron or Cherokee. You know Indian arms and legends, even names, were fashionable in Paris when Chateaubriand made every one weep with his Atala and Chactas? You could not have been more accurately dressed, and you will lay me under lasting obligation by taking the foils with Argyll, and investing your second with this dress.’