.

THE HIDDEN FACE.
When Mr.Malcolm Ormiston, with his usual good sense and penetration, took himself off, and left Leoline and Sir Norman tete-a-tete, his steps turned as mechanically as the needle to the North Pole toward La Masque's house.

Before it he wandered, around it he wandered, like an uneasy ghost, lost in speculation about the hidden face, and fearfully impatient about the flight of time.

If La Masque saw him hovering aloof and unable to tear himself away, perhaps it might touch her obdurate heart, and cause her to shorten the dreary interval, and summon him to her presence at once.

Just then some one opened the door, and his heart began to beat with anticipation; some one pronounced his name, and, going over, he saw the animated bag of bones--otherwise his lady-love's vassal and porter.
"La Masque says," began the attenuated lackey, and Ormiston's heart nearly jumped out of his mouth, "that she can't have anybody hanging about her house like its shadow; and she wants you to go away, and keep away, till the time comes she has mentioned." So saying the skeleton shut the door, and Ormiston's heart went down to zero.