wore her mask, and did not, as many did, hold it for a time in her hand.
I was convinced that she was pretty. Availing myself of the privilege of a masquerade, a microcosm in which it is impossible, except by voice and allusion, to distinguish friend from foe, I spoke—
"It is not easy, Mademoiselle, to deceive me," I began.
"So much the better for Monsieur," answered the mask, quietly.
"I mean," I said, determined to tell my fib, "that beauty is a gift more difficult to conceal than Mademoiselle supposes."
"Yet Monsieur has succeeded very well," she said in the same sweet and careless tones.
"I see the costume of this, the beautiful Mademoiselle de la Valliere, upon a form that surpasses her own; I raise my eyes, and I behold a mask, and yet I recognise the
