Colville was glad to break the silence. "Mrs. Bowen doesn't approve of dancing at vegliones."
"No?—why not?" inquired the old man, with invincible simplicity.
Mrs. Bowen smiled her pretty, small smile below her mask.
"The company is apt to be rather mixed," she said quietly.
"Yes," pursued Mr. Waters; "but you could dance with one another. The company seems very well behaved."
"Oh, quite so," Mrs. Bowen assented.
"Shortly after I came," said Mr. Waters, "one of the masks asked me to dance. I was really sorry that my age and traditions forbade my doing so. I tried to explain, but I'm afraid I didn't make myself quite clear."
"Probably it passed for a joke with her," said Colville, in order to say something.
"Ah, very likely; but I shall always feel that my impressions of the Carnival would have been more definite if could have danced. Now, if I were a young man like you——"
Imogene turned and looked at Colville through the eye-holes of her mask; even in that sort of isolation he thought her eyes expressed surprise.