hardly believe his senses, when he found
himself standing face to face with Nanina.

Her cheeks had turned perfectly colourless.
Her astonishment at seeing the young nobleman
appeared to have some sensation of
terror mingled with it. The waiting-woman,
who happened to stand by her side, instinctively
stretched out an arm to support her,
observing that she caught at the edge of the
table as Fabio hurried round to get behind
it and speak to her. When he drew near,
her head drooped on her breast, and she said,
faintly, " I never knew you were at Pisa: I
never thought you would be here. Oh, I am
true to what I said in my letter, though I
seem so false to it!"

"I want to speak to you about the letter—
to tell you how carefully I have kept it, how
often I have read it," said Fabio.

She turned away her head, and tried hard
to repress the tears that would force their
way into her eyes. " We should never have
met," she said, " never, never have met
again!"

Before Fabio could reply, the waiting-woman
by Nanina's side interposed.

"For heaven's sake don't stop speaking to
her here! " she exclaimed impatiently. " If
the steward or one of the upper servants was
to come in, you would get her into dreadful
trouble. Wait till to-morrow, and find some
fitter place than this."

Fabio felt the justice of the reproof
immediately. He tore a leaf out of his pocket-book,
and wrote on it: "I must tell you how
I honour and thank you for that letter.
To—morrow—ten o'clock—the wicket-gate at the
back of the Ascoli gardens. Believe in my
truth and honour, Nanina, for I believe implicitly
in yours." Having written these lines,
he took from among his bunch of watch-seals
a little key, wrapped it up in the note, and
pressed it into her hand. In spite of himself
his fingers lingered round hers, and he was on
the point of speaking to her again, when he
saw the waiting-woman's hand, which was
just raised to motion him away, suddenly
drop. Her colour changed at the same
moment, and she looked fixedly across the
table.

He turned round immediately, and saw
a masked woman standing alone in the
room, dressed entirely in yellow, from head
to foot. She had a yellow hood, a yellow
half-mask with deep fringe hanging down
over her mouth, and a yellow domino, cut at
the sleeves and edges into long flame-shaped
points, which waved backwards and forwards
tremulously in the light air wafted through
the doorway. The woman's black eyes seemed
to gleam with an evil brightness through the
sight-holes of the mask; and the tawny fringe
hanging before her mouth fluttered slowly
with every breath she drew. Without a
word or a gesture she stood before the table,
and her gleaming black eyes fixed steadily
on Fabio, the instant he confronted her.
A sudden chill struck through him, as he
observed that the yellow of the stranger's
domino and mask was of precisely the same
shade as the yellow of the hangings and
furniture which his wife had chosen after their
marriage, for the decoration of her favourite
sitting-room.

"The Yellow Mask! " whispered the
waiting-girls nervously, crowding together behind
the table. " The Yellow Mask again!"

"Make her speak!"

"Ask her to have something!"

"This gentleman will ask her. Speak
to her, sir. Do speak to her! She glides
about in that fearful yellow dress like a
ghost."

Fabio looked round mechanically at the
girl who was whispering to him. He saw at
the same time that Nanina still kept her head
turned away, and that she had her
handkerchief at her eyes. She was evidently
struggling yet with the agitation produced
by their unexpected meeting, and was, most
probably for that reason, the only person in
the room not conscious of the presence of the
Yellow Mask.

"Speak to her, sir. Do speak to her!"
whispered two of the waiting-girls together.

Fabio turned again towards 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 gaily, 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."