A Devotee Part 8

He was alarmed, and clumsily helped her to loosen them. Her small face, released from the mask, looked shrunk and pinched like a squirrel's in its thrown-back hood. The pink glow upon it from the lamp was in horrible contrast with its agonized expression.

'What is it? what is it?' said Doll, in distress nearly as great as her own, taking her little clenched hand, and holding it, still clenched, in his large grasp. 'Are you ill?'

She shook her head impatiently.

'Would you like--shall I--fetch Mr. Loftus?'

She winced as if she had been struck.

'No,' she gasped; 'I will not see him--I will not see him!'

A change came over Doll's face. Involuntarily, his hand tightened its clasp on hers.

'These entertainments,' said the Bishop to Mr. Loftus, as they paused for a moment in the gallery, and looked down into the ballroom, which was now rapidly refilling with gaily-dressed women and pink and black coats, 'are, I believe, typical of English country life. They are--ahem!--the gallery seems conducive to conversation; it is, in fact, a--er--whispering-gallery.' Here he turned, smiling, to Mr. Loftus.

'Perhaps Mr. Doll has hardly reached the stage at which he will call upon me to officiate--just so; we will go down by the other staircase--but I trust, though I might be in the way at present, that my services may be required a little later on.'

'I should like to see Doll married,' said Mr. Loftus, who had been not a little surprised at the eager manner in which the young man was bending towards the figure with her back towards them, whose fallen-back hood intercepted her features. He recognised the domino.

'I had no idea Peggy had made such an impression,' he said to himself.

As he re-entered the ballroom, he met Lady Pierpoint, also returning to it with her two plump little girls in tow, whom she had been tidying in the cloak-room. Captain Charrington and some of the other men from Wilderleigh were waiting near the doorway, claiming first dances as their party came in. The orchestra, who had been refreshing themselves, were remounting to their places.

'Then, where is Sibyl?' said Mr. Loftus, looking at Peggy.

'She went to the gallery a long time ago,' replied Peggy promptly, 'with Mr. Doll, to see the people unmask at twelve o'clock.'

Mr. Loftus smiled. 'It was a horrible sight as seen from below,' he said; 'half the men's faces were black, and the hair of every one of them stood up at the back.'

The band struck up a swaying, languorous valse such as tears the hearts out of young persons in their teens.

'I must go home,' Sibyl kept repeating feverishly. 'Doll, you must get the carriage. I must go home.'

Doll was engaged to Peggy for this valse, but he had forgotten it. Sibyl was engaged to Captain Charrington, but she had forgotten it.

He was terrified, as only reticent persons can be, lest her loss of self-control should be observed. He helped her to her feet, and took her to the cloak-room, she clinging convulsively to him. Her entire disregard of appearances filled him with apprehension. The cloak-room was empty, even of attendants, for it had been thronged till within the last ten minutes, and now the wave had surged back to the ballroom, and the maids, their duties finished, had slipped away to see the spectacle.

Sibyl cast herself down on a chair, shivering. Her little Grecian crown of diamonds fell crooked.

'Let me fetch Lady Pierpoint,' said Doll urgently.

'No, no,' she said imploringly; 'I want to go home. Oh, Doll, get the carriage, and take me home. Is it so much to ask?'

He looked at her in doubt. She was not fit to return to the ballroom.

Evidently she would make no attempt to conceal her despair, whatever its cause might be, from the first chance comer.

'I will take you,' he said; and he rushed out to the stables, found the Wilderleigh coachman, and himself helped to put the horses into the brougham.

'It was ordered for one o'clock especially for Mr. Loftus,' said the coachman, hesitating, 'and the landau, and the fly, and the homnibus for half-past three.'

'You will be back in time for Mr. Loftus,' said Doll. 'Mrs. Loftus is ill, and must go home immediately.'

He had the brougham at the door in ten minutes, and returned to the cloak-room to find a maid standing by Sibyl with a gla.s.s of water. Sibyl was still shivering, holding on to the chair with both hands, her eyes half closed, her face ghastly.

'I am afraid the lady is ill,' said the servant.

It was very evident that she was ill.

'The carriage is here,' said Doll. 'Can you manage to walk to it?'

She rose unsteadily, and the maid wrapped her in her white cloak. It annoyed Doll that the maid evidently looked upon them as an interesting young married couple.

He gave Sibyl his arm, and she staggered against him. He hesitated, and then compressed his lips, put his arm round her, and, half carrying, half leading her, helped her to the carriage.

It was a white night with snow upon the ground. The band was playing one of Chevalier's songs. Out into the solemn night came the urgent appeal of ''Enery 'Awkins' to his Eliza not to die an old maid, accompanied by the dull, threshing sound of many feet.

As the carriage began to move, Sibyl seemed to revive, and a moan broke from her.

'Oh, Doll,' she said suddenly, turning towards him and catching his hand and wringing it. 'It isn't true, is it? It is only a horrible lie.'

'What isn't true?' he said fiercely, almost hating her for the pain she was causing him, not his hand.

'It isn't true what that man said in the next arch, that--that Mr.

Loftus married me out of pity?' And she swayed herself to and fro.

She had asked the only person to whom Mr. Loftus had confided his real reasons for his marriage.

It had been on the tip of Doll's tongue all the evening to say: 'Why did you marry him? _I_ would have married you for love.' But he mastered himself.

'It isn't true, is it?' gasped Sibyl.

Doll set his teeth.

'No,' he said. 'It's a lie. He married you for love. He--_told me so_!'

CHAPTER X.

'Pour connaitre il faut savoir ignorer.'--AMIEL.

'Doll,' said Mr. Loftus, the morning after the ball, when all the guests had departed, except the Pierpoints, 'I do not expect absolute perfection in my fellow-creatures, but it appeared to me that you fell rather below your usual near approach to it last night. What do _you_ think?'