“Yes.”
“From this out I promise to be twenty years younger. But no one is to know it but you. Do you think you will know it? I shouldn’t like to keep the secret to myself altogether.”
“No; I will help you. It shall be our secret.”
She gave a low laugh of delight. He convinced himself that she had entered into the light spirit of banter in which he believed that he was talking.
The music ceased again. He whirled her to the seat where he had left Mrs. Bowen. She was not there, nor the others.
Colville felt the meanness of a man who has betrayed his trust, and his self-contempt was the sharper because the trust had been as tacit and indefinite as it was generous. The effect of Mrs. Bowen’s absence was as if she had indignantly flown, and left him to the consequences of his treachery.
He sat down rather blankly with Imogene to wait for her return; it was the only thing they could do.
It had grown very hot. The air was thick with dust. The lights burned through it as through a fog.
“I believe I will take off my mask,” she said. “I can scarcely breathe.”
“No, no,” protested Colville; “that won’t do.”
“I feel faint,” she gasped.
His heart sank. “Don’t,” he said incoherently. “Come with me into the vestibule, and get a breath of air.”
He had almost to drag her through the crowd, but in the vestibule she revived, and they returned to their place again. He did not share the easy content with which she recognised the continued absence of Mrs. Bowen.
“Why they must be lost. But isn’t it perfect sitting here and watching the maskers?”
“Perfect,” said Colville distractedly.
“Don’t you like to make romances about the different ones?”
It was on Colville’s tongue to say that he had made all the romances he wished for that evening, but he only answered, “Oh, very.”
“Poor Mrs. Bowen,” laughed the girl. “It will be such a joke on her, with her punctilious notions, getting lost from her protégée at a Carnival ball! I shall tell everyone.”
“Oh no, don’t,” said Colville, in horror that his mask scarcely concealed.
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be at all the thing.”
“Why, are you becoming Europeanised too?” she demanded. “I thought you went in for all sorts of unconventionalities. Recollect your promise. You must be as impulsive as I am.”
Colville, staring anxiously about in every direction, made for the first time the reflection that most young girls probably conform to the proprieties without in the least knowing why.
“Do you think,” he asked, in desperation, “that you would be afraid to be left here a moment while I went about in the crowd and tried to find them?”
“Not at all,” she said. But she added, “Don’t be gone long.”
“Oh no,” he answered, pulling off his mask. “Be sure not to move from here on any account.”
He plunged into the midst of the crowd that buffeted him from side to side as he struck against its masses. The squeaking and gibbering masks mocked in their falsetto at his wild-eyed, naked face thrusting hither and thither among them.
“I saw your lady wife with another gentleman,” cried one of them, in a subtle misinterpretation of the cause of his distraction.
The throng had immensely increased; the clowns and harlequins ran shrieking up and down, and leaped over one another’s heads.
It was useless. He went back to Imogene with a heart-sickening fear that she too might have vanished.
But she was still there.
“You ought to have come sooner,” she said gaily. “That red mask has been here again. He looked as if he wanted to make love to me this time. But he didn’t. If you’d been here you might have asked him where Mrs. Bowen was.”
Colville sat down. He had done what he could to mend the matter, and the time had come for philosophical submission. It was now his duty to keep up Miss Graham’s spirits. They were both Americans, and from the national standpoint he was simply the young girl’s middle-aged bachelor friend. There was nothing in the situation for him to beat his breast about.
“Well, all that we can do is to wait for them,” he said.
“Oh yes,” she answered easily. “They’ll be sure to come back in the course of time.”
They waited a half-hour, talking somewhat at random, and still the others did not come. But the red mask came again. He approached Colville, and said politely—
“La signora è partita.”
“The lady gone?” repeated Colville, taking this to be part of the red mask’s joke.
“La bambina pareva poco lene.”
“The little one not well?” echoed Colville again, rising. “Are you joking?”
The mask made a deep murmur of polite deprecation. “I am not capable of such a thing in a serious affair. Perhaps you know me?” he said, taking off his mask, and in further sign of good faith he gave the name of a painter sufficiently famous in Florence.
“I beg your pardon, and thank you,” said Colville. He had no need to speak to Imogene; her hand was already trembling on his arm.
They drove home in silence through the white moonlight of the streets, filled everywhere with the gay voices and figures of the Carnival.
Mrs. Bowen met them at the door of her apartment, and received them with a manner that justly distributed the responsibility and penalty for their escapade. Colville felt that a meaner spirit would have wreaked its displeasure upon the girl alone. She made short, quiet answers to all his eager inquiries. Most probably it was some childish indisposition; Effie had been faint. No, he need not go for the doctor. Mr. Waters had called the doctor, who had just gone away. There was nothing else that he could do for her. She dropped her eyes, and in everything but words dismissed him. She would not even remain with him till he could decently get himself out of the house. She left Imogene to receive his adieux, feigning that she heard Effie
