Can I aid the Countess in her unequal struggle? Say but how the greater
the danger or the sacrifice, the happier will it make me. _Can_ I
aid her?"

"If you despise a danger--which, yet, is not a danger; if you despise,
as she does, the tyrannical canons of the world; and if you are
chivalrous enough to devote yourself to a lady's cause, with no reward
but her poor gratitude; if you can do these things you can aid her, and
earn a foremost place, not in her gratitude only, but in her
friendship."

At those words the lady in the mask turned away and seemed to weep.

I vowed myself the willing slave of the Countess. "But," I added, "you
told me she would soon be here."

"That is, if nothing unforeseen should happen; but with the eye of the
Count de St. Alyre in the house, and open, it is seldom safe to stir."

"Does she wish to see me?" I asked, with a tender hesitation.

"First, say have you really thought of her, more than once, since the
adventure of the Belle Etoile?"

"She never leaves my thoughts; day and night her beautiful eyes haunt
me; her sweet voice is always in my ear."

"Mine is said to resemble hers," said the mask.

"So it does," I answered. "But it is only a resemblance."