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Cruel As The Grave

Page 89

While Sybil stood behind the group, she saw her husband and her rival

precede every one to the door.

"Names, if you please, sir?" inquired the usher with a bow.

"Harold the Saxon and Edith the Fair," answered Mr. Berners in a low

voice.

"Mr. Harry Claxton and Miss Esther Clair!" shouted poor old Abe at the

top of his voice as he opened wider the door to admit his unknown master

and the lady.

"Name, sir, please?" he continued, addressing the next party.

"Rob Roy Macgregor."

"Mr. Robert McCracker!" shouted the usher, passing in this mask, and

passing immediately to the next with, "Name, missus, please?"

"Fenella the dumb girl," murmured a very shy little maiden, whom the

usher immediately announced as "An Ell of a dumb girl!" And so on, he

went, making the most absurd as well as the most awful blunders with

ladies' and gentlemen's names, as announcing the "Grand Turk" as Miss

Ann Burke; for which last mistake the poor old man was not much to

blame, as the subject was but a little fellow in a turban and long gown,

whom Polonius naturally took to be a woman in a rather fantastic female

dress. But when he thundered forth a "Musketeer" as a "mosquito," and a

"Crusader" as a "curiosity," and "Joan of Arc" as "Master Johnny Dark,"

he was quite unpardonable.

Meanwhile Sybil had entered the room, which was blazing with light and

resounding with music. As the guests were now nearly all assembled, the

gentlemen selected partners and opened the ball with a grand promenade

to the music of the grand march in "Faust."

Introductions are of course unnecessary at private masquerades, as well

as impracticable at all such festivals; so when the ghastly mask "Death"

came up and offered his skeleton arm to Sybil for the promenade, she

unhesitatingly accepted it, supposing him all the while to be one of her

invited guests.

But in joining the promenaders, he entered the circle at a point

immediately in the rear of Harold the Saxon, and Edith the Fair. Death

kept his eye on the two, and speaking in a low voice, inquired of his

companion; "Beautiful mask! though we may not yet discover ourselves to each other,

yet we are at liberty to form a guess of the identity of our friends

here?"

"Yes," answered Sybil, in a low voice. She scarcely understood what she

had been asked, or what she had answered; for her whole attention was

absorbed in watching her husband and her rival, who were walking

immediately before her--so close, yet so unconscious of her presence; so

near in person, yet so far in spirit!

"--As, for instance, lovely mask," continued Death, "I think I know this

'Fair Edith' as the beautiful blonde who is staying here with our

hostess. Am I not right?"

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