bind me in that chain you threatened," and Mae started: her fingers had
felt another scrap of paper among the flowers, but she did not drop it
from the carriage, as her first impulse was; she held it tight and close
in her warm right hand until she was fairly at home and safe in her own
room. Then she opened and read in an Italian hand, "To my little Queen
of the Carnival."

Could he have written that as he stood by the wonderful veiled lady,
with her white mysterious beauty, with the purple shadows about her dark
eyes, while she--and Mae looked in her glass again. What did she see?
Certainly a different picture, but a picture for all that. Life and
color and youth, a-tremble and a-quiver in every quick movement of her
face, in the sudden lifting of the eyelids, the swift turn of the lips,
the litheness and carelessness of every motion; above and beyond all,
the picture possessed that rare quality which some artist has declared
to be the highest beauty, that picturesque charm which shines from
within, that magnetic flash and quiver which comes and goes "ere one can
say it lightens."

The veiled lady's face was stranger, more mysterious, to an artistic or
an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and endless variety
usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, and so Bero called
Mae

"My little Queen of the Carnival."



CHAPTER VIII.