"I have seen you. Do you think I am blind?" he demanded, indignantly.

"My face, I mean. I don't consider that you can see a person without looking in her face. Now you have never looked in mine, and how do you know I have any face at all?"

"Madame, you mock me."

"Not at all. How are you to know what is behind this mask?"

"I feel it, and that is better; and I love you all the same."

"Mr. Ormiston, how do you know but I am ugly."

"Madame, I do not believe you are; you are all too perfect not to have a perfect face; and even were it otherwise, I still love you!"

She broke into a laugh--one of her low, short, deriding laughs.

"You do! O man, how wise thou art! I tell you, if I took off this mask, the sight would curdle the very blood in your veins with horror--would freeze the lifeblood in your heart. I tell you!" she pa.s.sionately cried, "there are sights too horrible for human beings to look on and live, and this--this is one of them!"

He started back, and stared at her aghast.

"You think me mad," she said, in a less fierce tone, "but I am not; and I repeat it, Mr. Ormiston, the sight of what this mask conceals would blast you. Go now, for Heaven's sake, and leave me in peace, to drag out the rest of my miserable life; and if ever you think of me, let it be to pray that it might speedily end. You have forced me to say this: so now be content. Be merciful, and go!"

She made a desperate gesture, and turned to leave him, but he caught her hand and held her fast.

"Never!" he cried, fiercely. "Say what you will! let that mask hide what it may! I will never leave you till life leaves me!"

"Man, you are mad! Release my hand and let me go!"

"Madame, hear me. There is but one way to prove my love, and my sanity, and that is--"

"Well?" she said, almost touched by his earnestness.

"Raise your mask and try me! Show me your face and see if I do not love you still!"

"Truly I know how much love you will have for me when it is revealed. Do you know that no one has looked in my face for the last eight years."

He stood and gazed at her in wonder.

"It is so, Mr. Ormiston; and in my heart I have vowed a vow to plunge headlong into the most loathsome plague-pit in London, rather than ever raise it again. My friend, be satisfied. Go and leave me; go and forget me."

"I can do neither until I have ceased to forget every thing earthly.

Madame, I implore you, hear me!"

"Mr. Ormiston, I tell you, you but court your own doom. No one can look on me and live!"

"I will risk it," he said with an incredulous smile. "Only promise to show me your face."

"Be it so then!" she cried almost fiercely. "I promise, and be the consequences on your own head."

His whole face flushed with joy.

"I accept them. And when is that happy time to come?"

"Who knows! What must be done, had best be done quickly; but I tell thee it were safer to play with the lightning's chain than tamper with what thou art about to do."

"I take the risk! Will you raise your mask now?"

"No, no--I cannot! But yet, I may before the sun rises. My face"--with bitter scorn--"shows better by darkness than by daylight. Will you be out to see, the grand illumination."

"Most certainly."

"Then meet me here an hour after midnight, and the face so long hidden shall be revealed. But, once again, on the threshold of doom, I entreat you to pause."

"There is no such word for me!" he fiercely and exultingly cried. "I have your promise, and I shall hold you to it! And, madame, if, at last, you discover my love is changeless as fate itself, then--then may I not dare to hope for a return?"

"Yes; then you may hope," she said, with cold mockery. "If your love survives the sight, it will be mighty, indeed, and well worthy a return."

"And you will return it?"

"I will."

"You will be my wife?"

"With all my heart!"

"My darling!" he cried, rapturously--"for you are mine already--how can I ever thank you for this? If a whole lifetime devoted and consecrated to your happiness can repay you, it shall be yours!"

During this rhapsody, her hand had been on the handle of the door. Now she turned it.

"Good-night, Mr. Ormiston," she said, and vanished.

CHAPTER VII. THE EARL'S BARGE.

Shocks of joy, they tell me, seldom kill. Of my own knowledge I cannot say, for I have had precious little experience of such shocks in my lifetime, Heaven knows; but in the present instance, I can safely aver, they had no such dismal effect on Ormiston. Nothing earthly could have given that young gentleman a greater shock of joy than the knowledge he was to behold the long hidden face of his idol. That that face was ugly, he did not for an instant believe, or, at least, it never would be ugly to him. With a form so perfect--a form a sylph might have envied--a voice sweeter than the Singing Fountain of Arabia, hands and feet the most perfectly beautiful the sun ever shone on, it was simply a moral and physical impossibility that they could be joined to a repulsive face. There was a remote possibility that it was a little less exquisite than those ravishing items, and that her morbid fancy made her imagine it homely, compared with them, but he knew he never would share in that opinion. It was the reasoning of love, rather than logic; for when love glides smiling in at the door, reason stalks gravely, not to say sulkily, out of the window, and, standing afar off, eyes disdainfully the didos and antics of her late tenement. There was very little reason, therefore, in Ormiston's head and heart, but a great deal of something sweeter, joy--joy that thrilled and vibrated through every nerve within him. Leaning against the portal, in an absurd delirium of delight--for it takes but a trifle to jerk those lovers from the slimiest depths of the Slough of Despond to the topmost peak of the mountain of ecstasy--he uncovered his head that the night-air might cool its feverish throbbings. But the night-air was as hot as his heart; and, almost suffocated by the sultry closeness, he was about to start for a plunge in the river, when the sound of coming footsteps and voices arrested him. He had met with so many odd ad ventures to-night that he stopped now to see who was coming; for on every hand all was silent and forsaken.

Footsteps and voices came closer; two figures took shape in the gloom, and emerged from the darkness into the glimmering lamp light. He recognised them both. One was the Earl of Rochester; the other, his dark-eyed, handsome page--that strange page with the face of the lost lady! The earl was chatting familiarly, and laughing obstreperously at something or other, while the boy merely wore a languid smile, as if anything further in that line were quite beneath his dignity.

"Silence and solitude," said the earl, with a careless glance around, "I protest, Hubert, this night seems endless. How long is it till midnight?"

"An hour and a half at least, I should fancy," answered the boy, with a strong foreign accent. "I know it struck ten as we pa.s.sed St. Paul's."

"This grand bonfire of our most worshipful Lord Mayor will be a sight worth seeing," remarked the earl. "When all these piles are lighted, the city will be one sea of fire."

"A slight foretaste of what most of its inhabitants will behold in another world," said the page, with a French shrug. "I have heard Lilly's prediction that London is to be purified by fire, like a second Sodom; perhaps it is to be verified to-night."

"Not unlikely; the dome of St. Paul's would be an excellent place to view the conflagration."