You've not been--doing anything foolish, have you?"

"Peter hasn't," the little man lied cheerfully; "Peter went home to sulk like the unwhipped cub he is; and sulking, was yet decent enough to lend me these rags."

"You--you're not Peter Kenny?"

"No more than you are Molly Lessing."

"Molly Lessing! What do you know--? Who can you be? Why are you masked?"

"Simply," he explained pleasantly, "that my incognito may remain such to all save you."

"But--but who _are_ you?"

"It is permitted?" he asked, with a gesture offering to take the tiny printed card of dance engagements that dangled from her fingers by its silken thong.

In dumb mystification the girl surrendered it.

Seating himself beside her, P. Sybarite ran his eye down the list.

"The last was number--which?" he enquired with unruffled impudence.

Half angry, half amused, wholly confused, she told him: "Fifteen."

"Then one number only remains."

His lips hardened as he read the initials pencilled opposite that numeral; they were "B.S."

"Bayard Shaynon?" he queried.

She a.s.sented with a nod, her brows gathering.

Coolly, with the miniature pencil attached to the card, he changed the small, faint _B_ to a large black _P_, strengthened the _S_ to correspond, and added to that _ybarite_; then with a bow returned the card.

The girl received the evidence of her senses with a silent gasp.

He bowed again: "Yours to command."

"You--Mr. Sybarite!"

"I, Miss Blessington."

"But--incredible!" she cried. "I can't believe you ..."

Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor, meeting her stare with his wistful and diffident smile.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor.]

"You see," he said, readjusting the mask.

"But--what does this mean?"

"Do you remember our talk on the way home after _Kismet_--four hours or several years ago: which is it?"

"I remember we talked ..."

"And I--clumsily enough, Heaven knows!--told you that I'd go far for one who'd been kind and tolerant to me, if she were in trouble and could use my poor services?"

"I remember--yes."

"You suspected--surely--it was yourself I had in mind?"

"Why, yes; but--"

"And you'll certainly allow that what happened later, at the door, when I stood in the way of the importunate Mr. 'B.S.'--if I'm not sadly in error--was enough to convince any one that you needed a friend's good offices?"

"So," she said softly, with glimmering eyes--"so for that you followed me here, Mr. Sybarite!"

"I wish I might claim it. But it wouldn't be true. No--I didn't follow you."

"Please," she begged, "don't mystify me--"

"I don't mean to. But to tell the truth, my own head is still awhirl with all the chapter of accidents that brought me here. Since you flew off with B.S., following afoot, I've traversed a vast deal of adventure--to wind up here. If," he added, grinning, "this is the wind-up. I've a creepy, crawly feeling that it isn't...."

"Miss Blessington," he pursued seriously, "if you have patience to listen to what I've been through since we parted in Thirty-eighth Street--?" Encouraged by her silence he went on: "I've broken the bank at a gambling house; been held up for my winnings at the pistol's point--but managed to keep them. I've been in a raid and escaped only after committing felonious a.s.sault on two detectives. I then burglarised a private residence, and saved the mistress of the house from being murdered by her rascally husband--blundered thence to the deadliest dive in New York--met and slanged mine ancient enemy, the despoiler of my house--took part in a drunken brawl--saved my infatuated young idiot of a cousin, Peter Kenny, from a.s.sa.s.sination--took him home, borrowed his clothing, and impudently invited myself to this party on the mere suspicion that 'Molly Lessing' and Marian Blessington might be one and the same, after all!... And all, it appears, that I might come at last to beg a favour of you."

"I can't think what it can be," breathed the girl, dumfounded.

"To forgive my unpardonable impertinence--"

"I've not been conscious of it."

"You'll recognise it immediately. I am about to transgress your privacy with a question--two, in fact. Will you tell me, please, in confidence, why you refused my cousin, Peter Kenny, when he asked you to marry him?"

Colouring, she met his eyes honestly.

"Because--why, it was so utterly absurd! He's only a boy. Besides, I don't care for him--that way."

"You care for some one else--'that way'?"

"Yes," said the girl softly, averting her face.

"Is it--Mr. Bayard Shaynon?"

"No," she replied after a perceptible pause.

"But you have promised to marry him?"

"I once made him that promise--yes."