Fabio turned again toward the table. The black eyes were still gleaming at him from behind the tawny yellow of the mask. He nodded to the girls who had just spoken, cast one farewell look at Nanina, and moved down the room to get round to the side of the table at which the Yellow Mask was standing. Step by step as he moved the bright eyes followed him. Steadily and more steadily their evil light seemed to shine through and through him, as he turned the corner of the table and approached the still, spectral figure.
He came close up to the woman, but she never moved; her eyes never wavered for an instant. He stopped and tried to speak; but the chill struck through him again. An overpowering dread, an unutterable loathing seized on him; all sense of outer things—the whispering of the waiting-girls behind the table, the gentle cadence of the dance music, the distant hum of joyous talk—suddenly left him. He turned away shuddering, and quitted the room.
Following the sound of the music, and desiring before all things now to join the crowd wherever it was largest, he was stopped in one of the smaller apartments by a gentleman who had just risen from the card table, and who held out his hand with the cordiality of an old friend.
'Welcome back to the world, Count Fabio!' he began, gayly, then suddenly checked himself. 'Why, you look pale, and your hand feels cold. Not ill, I hope?'
'No, no. I have been rather startled—I can't say why—by a very strangely dressed woman, who fairly stared me out of countenance.'
'You don't mean the Yellow Mask?'
'Yes I do. Have you seen her?'
'Everybody has seen her; but nobody can make her unmask, or get her to speak. Our host has not the slightest notion who she is; and our hostess is horribly frightened at her. For my part, I think she has given us quite enough of her mystery and her grim dress; and if my name, instead of being nothing but plain Andrea D'Arbino, was Marquis Melani, I would say to her: 'Madam, we are here to laugh and amuse ourselves; suppose you open your lips, and charm us by appearing in a prettier dress!''
During this conversation they had sat down together, with their backs toward the door, by the side of one of the card-tables. While D'Arbino was speaking, Fabio suddenly felt himself shuddering again, and became conscious of a sound of low breathing behind him.
He turned round instantly, and there, standing between them, and peering down at them, was the Yellow Mask!
Fabio started up, and his friend followed his example. Again the gleaming black eyes rested steadily on the young nobleman's face, and again their look chilled him to the heart.
'Yellow Lady, do you know my friend?' exclaimed D'Arbino, with mock solemnity.
There was no answer. The fatal eyes never moved from Fabio's face.
'Yellow Lady,' continued the other, 'listen to the music. Will you dance with me?'
The eyes looked away, and the figure glided slowly from the room.
'My dear count,' said D'Arbino, 'that woman seems to have quite an effect on you. I declare she has left you paler than ever. Come into the supper-room with me, and have some wine; you really look as if you wanted it.'
They went at once to the large refreshment-room. Nearly all the guests had by this time begun to dance again. They had the whole apartment, therefore, almost entirely to themselves.
Among the decorations of the room, which were not strictly in accordance with genuine Arcadian simplicity, was a large looking-glass, placed over a well-furnished sideboard. D'Arbino led Fabio in this direction, exchanging greetings as he advanced with a gentleman who stood near the glass looking into it, and carelessly fanning himself with his mask.
'My dear friend!' cried D'Arbino, 'you are the very man to lead us straight to the best bottle of wine in the palace. Count Fabio, let me present to you my intimate and good friend, the Cavaliere Finello, with whose family I know you are well acquainted. Finello, the count is a little out of spirits, and I have prescribed a good dose of wine. I see a whole row of bottles at your side, and I leave it to you to apply the remedy. Glasses there! three glasses, my lovely shepherdess with the black eyes—the three largest you have got.'
The glasses were brought; the Cavaliere Finello chose a particular bottle, and filled them. All three gentlemen turned round to the sideboard to use it as a table, and thus necessarily faced the looking-glass.
'Now let us drink the toast of toasts,' said D'Arbino. 'Finello, Count Fabio—the ladies of Pisa!'
Fabio raised the wine to his lips, and was on the point of drinking it, when he saw reflected in the glass the figure of the Yellow Mask. The glittering eyes were again fixed on him, and the yellow-hooded head bowed slowly, as if in acknowledgment of the toast he was about to drink. For the third time the strange chill seized him, and he set down his glass of wine untasted.
'What is the matter?' asked D'Arbino.
'Have you any dislike, count, to that particular wine?' inquired the cavaliere.
'The Yellow Mask!' whispered Fabio. 'The Yellow Mask again!'
They all three turned round directly toward the door. But it was too late—the figure had disappeared.
'Does any one know who this Yellow Mask is?' asked Finello. 'One may guess by the walk that the figure is a woman's. Perhaps it may be the strange color she has chosen for her dress, or perhaps her stealthy way of moving from room to room; but there is certainly something mysterious and startling about her.'
'Startling enough, as the count would tell you,' said D'Arbino. 'The Yellow Mask has been responsible for his loss of spirits and change of complexion, and now she has prevented him even from drinking his wine.'
'I can't account for it,' said Fabio, looking round him uneasily; 'but this is the third room into which she has followed me—the third time she has seemed to fix her eyes on me alone. I suppose my nerves are hardly in a fit state yet for masked balls and adventures; the sight of her seems to chill me. Who can she be?'
'If she followed me a fourth time,' said Finello, 'I should insist on her unmasking.'
'And suppose she refused?' asked his friend
