"Now or never," he whispered to himself,
and snatched at the mask.

His arm was again thrust aside; but
this time the woman raised her disengaged
hand at the same moment, and removed the
yellow mask.

The lamps shed their soft light full on her
face.

It was the face of his dead wife.

Signor Andrea d'Arbino, searching vainly
through the various rooms in the palace
for Count Fabio d'Ascoli, and trying, as
a last resource, the corridor leading to
the ball-room and grand staircase,
discovered his friend lying on the floor in a
swoon, without any living creature near him.
Determining to avoid alarming the guests, if
possible, d'Arbino first sought help in the
ante-chamber. He found there the
marquis's valet, assisting the Cavaliere Finello
(who was just taking his departure) to put
on his cloak.

While Finello and his friend carried Fabio
to an open window in the ante-chamber, the
valet procured some iced-water. This simple
remedy, and the change of atmosphere,
proved enough to restore the fainting man to
his senses, but hardly—as it seemed to his
friends—to his former self. They noticed a
change to blankness and stillness in his face,
and, when he spoke, an indescribable alteration
in the tone of his voice.

"I found you in a room in the corridor,"
said d'Arbino.  "What made you
faint? Don't you remember? Was it the
heat?"

Fabio waited for a moment, painfully
collecting his ideas. He looked at the
valet; and Finello signed to the man to
withdraw.

"Was it the heat?" repeated d'Arbino.

"No," answered Fabio, in strangely-hushed,
steady tones. "I have seen the face that was
behind the Yellow Mask."

"Well?"

"It was the face of my dead wife."

"Your dead wife!"

"When the mask was removed I saw her
face. Not as I remember it in the pride of
her youth and beauty—not even as I
remember her on her sick-bed—but as I
remember her in her coffin."

"Count! for God's sake rouse yourself!
Collect your thoughts—remember where you
are—and free your mind of its horrible delusion."

"Spare me all remonstrances—I am not fit
to bear them. My life has only one object
now—the pursuing of this mystery to the end.
Will you help me? I am scarcely fit to act
for myself."

He still spoke in the same unnaturally
hushed, deliberate tones. D'Arbino and
Finello exchanged glances behind him as he
rose from the sofa on which he had hitherto
been lying.

"We will help you in everything," said
D'Arbino, soothingly. "Trust in us to the
end. What do you wish to do first?"

"The figure must have gone through this
room. Let us descend the staircase, and ask
the servants if they have seen it pass."

(Both d'Arbino and Finello remarked that
he did not say her).

They inquired down to the very courtyard.
Not one of the servants had seen the
Yellow Mask.

The last resource was the porter at the
outer gate. They applied to him; and in
answer to their questions, he asserted that he
had most certainly seen a lady in a yellow
domino and mask drive away, about half an
hour before, in a hired coach.

"Should you remember the coachman
again?" asked d'Arbino.

"Perfectly; he is an old friend of mine."

"And you know where he lives?"

"Yes, as well as I know where I do."

"Any reward you like, if you can get
somebody to mind your lodge, and can take
us to that house."

In a few minutes they were following the
porter through the dark, silent streets. ''We
had better try the stables first," said the
man. "My friend the coachman will hardly
have had time to do more than set the lady
down. We shall most likely catch him just
putting up his horses."

The porter turned out to be right. On
entering the stable-yard, they found that
the empty coach had just driven into it.

"You have been taking home a lady in a
yellow domino from the masquerade," said
d'Arbino, putting some money into the
coachman's hand.

"Yes, sir; I was engaged by that lady
for the evening—engaged to drive her to the
ball, as well as to drive her home.

"Where did you take her from? "

"From a very extraordinary place from
the gate of the Campo Santo."

During this colloquy, Finello and d'Arbino
had been standing with Fabio between them,
each giving him an arm. The instant the
last answer was given, he reeled back with a
cry of horror.

"Where have you taken her to now?"
asked d'Arbino. He looked about him
nervously as he put the question and spoke, for
the first time in a whisper.

"To the Campo Santo, again," said the
coachman.

Fabio suddenly drew his arms out of the
arms of his friends, and sank to his knees on
the ground, hiding his face. From some
broken ejaculations which escaped him, it
seemed as if he dreaded that his senses were
leaving him, and that he was praying to be
preserved in his right mind.

"Why is he so violently agitated?" said
Finello, eagerly, to his friend.

"Hush!" returned the other. "You heard
him say that when he saw the face behind