mingled the rushing noise of silk, clatter of sole and heel, laughter and cries of capering maskers gathered from the four quarters of fashionable Gath to grace the opening of the House of Wycherly. They were all there, dowager, matron, débutante, old beaux, young gallant, dancing, laughing, coquetting, flirting. Young eyes mocked the masked eyes that wooed them; adolescence tormented maturity; the toothless ogled the toothsome. Unmasking alone could set right this topsy-turvy world of carnival.

A sinuous Harlequin, his skin-tight lozenge-patterned dress shimmering like the red and gold skin of a Malay snake, came weaving his way through the edges of the maelstrom, his eyes under the black half-mask glittering maliciously at the victims of his lathe-sword. With it he recklessly slapped whatever tempted him, patting gently the rounded arms and shoulders of nymph and shepherdess, using more vigour on the plump contours of fat and elderly courtiers, spinning on the points of his pump-toes, his limber lathe-sword curved in both hands above his head, leaping lithely over a chair here and there, and landing always as lightly as a cat on silent feet—a wiry, symmetrical figure under the rakish bi-corne, instinct with mischief and grace infernal.

Encountering a burly masker dressed like one of Cromwell's ponderous Ironsides, he hit him a resounding whack over his aluminum cuirass, and whispered:

"That Ironside rig doesn't conceal you: it reveals you, Karl! Out with your Bible and your Sword and preach the wrath to come!"

"It will come all right," said Westguard. "Do you know how many hundred thousand dollars are wasted here to-night?... And yesterday a woman died of hunger in Carmine Street. Don't worry about the wrath of God as long as people die of cold and hunger in the streets of Ascalon."

"That's not as bad as dying of inanition—which would happen to the majority here if they didn't have things like this to amuse 'em. For decency's sake, Karl, pity the perplexities of the rich for a change!"

Westguard grunted something under his casque; then, adjusting his aluminum mask:

"Are you having a good time, Dicky? I suppose you are."

"Oh, I'm gay enough," returned the Harlequin airily—"but there's never much genuine gaiety among the overfed." And he slapped a passing gallant with his wooden sword, spun around on his toes, bent over gracefully and stood on his hands, legs twinkling above him in the air. Then, with a bound he was on his nimble feet again, and, linking his arm in the arm of the Cromwellian trooper, strolled along the ranks of fanning dowagers, glancing amiably into their masked faces.

"Same old battle-line," he observed to his companion—"their jewels give them away. Same old tiaras, same old ladies—all fat, all fifty, all fanning away like the damned. Your aunt has on about a ton of emeralds. I think she does it for the purpose of banting, don't you, Karl——"

The uproar drowned his voice: Westguard, colossal in his armour, gazed gloomily around at the gorgeous spectacle for which his cousin Molly Wycherly was responsible.