It is no longer a question of a beard or a spangled mantle, a Polish dress or a pasteboard nose; the mutation of voice, the assumption of a different manner, walk, gesture, and mode of expression, are all necessary, and no small tact is required to effect this successfully.
I may be pardoned this little digression, as it serves to explain in some measure how I felt on entering the splendidly lit up _salons_ of the villa, crowded with hundreds of figures in all the varied costumes of a carnival,--the sounds of laughter mingled with the crash of the music; the hurrying hither and thither of servants with refreshments; the crowds gathered around fortune-tellers, whose predictions threw the parties at each moment into shouts of merriment; the eager following of some disappointed domino, interrogating every one to find out a lost mask.
For some time I stood an astonished spectator at the kind of secret intelligence which seemed to pervade the whole assemblage, when suddenly a mask, who for some time had been standing beside me, whispered in French,-- "If you pass your time in this manner, you must not feel surprised if your place be occupied." I turned hastily round, but she was gone.

She, I say, for the voice was clearly a woman's; her pink domino could be no guide, for hundreds of the same color passed me every instant.

The meaning of the allusion I had little doubt of.

I turned to speak to Power, but he was gone; and for the first moment of my life, the bitterness of rivalry crossed my mind.

It was true I had resigned all pretensions in his favor.