Of a sudden, it dawned on my slow brain that Lotzen did not know whether it was Moore or I that confronted him, and he wanted to hear my voice.  I saw no utility in obliging him; so, I stood impassive, staring calmly at them.

Lotzen turned to his companion.

“Speak to him, mademoiselle,” he said; “perchance the dulcet tones of Beauty may move the Beast to speech.”

I smiled at him addressing her as “mademoiselle.”

She shook her head.  “Methinks it’s Balaam not Beauty you need.”

He laughed.  “Even that does not stir him—­the fellow must be deaf.”

“Try signs on him.” she suggested.

“Good!  I’ll sign to him we want to see his face.”

“How, pray?”

“By pulling off his mask,” he answered—­and put out his hand, as though to do it.  With his fingers almost on it, he paused.

I stood quite still.  I felt perfectly sure he would not touch me; but, if he did, I intended to knock him down.  And I was not mistaken.  After a moment, he dropped his arm.

The woman laughed.  “Your nerve failed—­his didn’t,” she said dryly.

“Not at all, mademoiselle.  I thought of a better way.—­Observe.”

He slowly drew the long narrow-bladed sword, that went with his costume, and, taking the point in his left hand, bowed over it in mock courtesy.

“Will monsieur have the extreme kindness to remove his mask,” he said.

I admit I was a bit astonished.  Surely, this was rushing things with a vengeance—­to deliberately raise a situation that meant either a fight or a complete back-down by one of us.  And, as he would scarcely imagine I would do the latter, he must have intended to force a duel.

There might have been another reason, assuming that he was interested only in my identity:—­this procedure would have told him; for Moore would not have dared draw sword on the Heir Presumptive.  But I have never thought such was his idea; for he must have been very well satisfied, by this time, that none but an equal in rank would have acted so toward him.

And, being convinced that it was I that fronted him, he had suddenly seen an opportunity to accomplish in open fight what his hired assassin had bungled.  It is notorious that American officers know practically nothing of the art of fence; what easier than to drive me into drawing on him and, then, after a bit of play, to run me neatly through the heart.  What mattered it if he were the aggressor?  It would be easy to aver he had not known me—­that I had chosen to insult him, and, having refused to unmask and apologize, had suffered the consequences of my own rashness and bad manners.

And, even suppose no one believed his story that he did not know me.  What mattered it?  One does not execute the Heir Presumptive of Valeria for murder.  True, the King might rage—­and a term of banishment to his mountain estates might follow; yet, what trifling penalties for the end attained.  They would be only for the moment, as it were.  But the American would be dead—­the Crown sure—­the Princess still unmarried.