My last meeting with Lucy had been merely to justify my own character against an impression that weighed heavily on me; still, I thought he might have waited,--another day and I should be far away, neither to witness nor grieve over his successes.
"You still hesitate," whispered some one near me.
I wheeled round suddenly, but could not detect the speaker, and was again relapsing into my own musings, when the same voice repeated,-- "The white domino with the blue cape.

Adieu." Without waiting to reflect upon the singularity of the occurrence, I now hurried along through the dense crowd, searching on every side for the domino.
"Isn't that O'Malley ?" said an Englishman to his friend.
"Yes," replied the other; "the very man we want.

O'Malley, find a partner; we have been searching a _vis-a-vis_ this ten minutes." The speaker was an officer I had met at Sir George Dashwood's.

"How did you discover me ?" said I, suddenly.
"Not a very difficult thing if you carry your mask in your hand that way," was the answer.
And I now perceived that in the distraction of my thoughts I had been carrying my mask in this manner since my coming into the room.
"There now, what say you to the blue domino?
I saw her foot, and a girl with such an instep must be a waltzer." I looked round, a confused effort at memory passing across my mind; my eyes fell at the instant upon the embroidered sleeve of the domino, where a rosebud worked in silver at once reminded me of Catrina's secret.

"Ah," thought I, "La Senhora herself!" She was leaning upon the arm of a tall and portly figure in black; who this was I knew not, nor sought to discover, but at once advancing towards Donna Inez asked her to waltz.
Without replying to me she turned towards her companion, who seemed as it were to press her acceptance of my offer; she hesitated, however, for an instant, and curtsying deeply, declined it.