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While her eyes and thoughts were still compassionately fixed on him, the door of the bedroom opened, and the doctor came in, followed by Andrea D'Arbino, whose share in the strange adventure with the Yellow Mask caused him to feel a special interest in Fabio's progress toward recovery. "Asleep, I see; and sighing in his sleep," said the doctor, going to the bedside.
They noticed a change to blankness and stillness in his face, and when he spoke, an indescribable alteration in the tone of his voice. "I found you in a room in the corridor," said D'Arbino. "What made you faint? Don't you remember? Was it the heat?" Fabio waited for a moment, painfully collecting his ideas. He looked at the valet, and Finello signed to the man to withdraw.
Will you dance with me?" The eyes looked away, and the figure glided slowly from the room. "My dear count," said D'Arbino, "that woman seems to have quite an effect on you. I declare she has left you paler than ever. Come into the supper-room with me, and have some wine; you really look as if you wanted it." They went at once to the large refreshment-room.
"You may let go your hold, sir," she said, dropping the ruler, and turning toward D'Arbino with a smile on her white lips and a wicked calmness in her steady eyes. "I can wait for a better opportunity." With those words she walked to the door; and, turning round there, regarded Nanina fixedly. "I wish I had been a moment quicker with the ruler," she said, and went out.
"I have not half done with my partner yet." The guitar sounded once more, and the grotesque dog was on his hind legs in a moment. "I had heard that he was well again, that he had married her lately, and that he was away with her and her sister, and his child by the first wife," said D'Arbino; "but I had no suspicion that their place of retirement was so near us.
Not one of the servants had seen the Yellow Mask. The last resource was the porter at the outer gate. They applied to him; and in answer to their questions he asserted that he had most certainly seen a lady in a yellow domino and mask drive away, about half an hour before, in a hired coach. "Should you remember the coachman again?" asked D'Arbino. "Perfectly; he is an old friend of mine."
"Was it the heat?" repeated D'Arbino. "No," answered Fabio, in strangely hushed, steady tones. "I have seen the face that was behind the yellow mask." "Well?" "It was the face of my dead wife." "Your dead wife!" "When the mask was removed I saw her face. Not as I remember it in the pride of her youth and beauty not even as I remember her on her sick-bed but as I remember her in her coffin."
"Does any one know who this Yellow Mask is?" asked Finello. "One may guess by the walk that the figure is a woman's. Perhaps it may be the strange color she has chosen for her dress, or perhaps her stealthy way of moving from room to room; but there is certainly something mysterious and startling about her." "Startling enough, as the count would tell you," said D'Arbino.
For the third time the strange chill seized him, and he set down his glass of wine untasted. "What is the matter?" asked D'Arbino. "Have you any dislike, count, to that particular wine?" inquired the cavaliere. "The Yellow Mask!" whispered Fabio. "The Yellow Mask again!" They all three turned round directly toward the door. But it was too late the figure had disappeared.
The doctor glanced approvingly at D'Arbino. "Well, well, we won't argue about that now," he said. "I will lock up the money with the mask for to-day. Come here to-morrow morning as usual, my dear. By that time I shall have made up my mind on the right means for breaking your discovery to Count Fabio. Only let us proceed slowly and cautiously, and I answer for success."
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