take you there? You surely are not mad enough to follow the body
of that dead girl?"

"I shall follow it! You can come or not, just as you please."

"Oh! if you are determined, I will go with you, of course; but it
is the craziest freak I ever heard of. After this, you need
never laugh at me."

"I never will," said Sir Norman, moodily; "for if you love a face
you have never seen, I love one I have only looked on when dead.
Does it not seem sacrilege to throw any one so like an angel into
that horrible plague-pit?"

"I never saw an angel," said Ormiston, as he and his friend
started to go after the dead-cart. "And I dare say there have
been scores as beautiful as that poor girl thrown into the
plague-pit before now. I wonder why the house has been deserted,
and if she was really a bride. The bridegroom could not have
loved her much, I fancy, or not even the pestilence could have
scared him away."

"But, Ormiston, what an extraordinary thing it is that it should
be precisely the same face that the fortune-teller showed me.
There she was alive, and here she is dead; so I've lost all faith
in La Masque for ever."

Ormiston looked doubtful.

"Are you quite sure it is the same, Kingsley?"