He
looked at the valet, and Finello signed to the man to withdraw.
"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."
"Count! for God's sake, rouse yourself! Collect your
thoughts--remember where you are--and free your mind of its
horrible delusion."
"Spare me all remonstrances; I am not fit to bear them. My life
has only one object now--the pursuing of this mystery to the end.
Will you help me? I am scarcely fit to act for myself."
He still spoke in the same unnaturally hushed, deliberate tones.
D'Arbino and Finello exchanged glances behind him as he rose from
the sofa on which he had hitherto been lying.
"We will help you in everything," said D'Arbino, soothingly.
"Trust in us to the end. What do you wish to do first?"
"The figure must have gone through this room. Let us descend the
staircase and ask the servants if they have seen it pass."
(Both D'Arbino and Finello remarked that he did not say _her_.)
They inquired down to the very courtyard. Not one of the servants
had seen the Yellow Mask.
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