"I did more than that," the Princess went on. "Having strained the compact, I tempted him to break it—to shoot me or to shoot Marc'antonio, so that one or other of us might be free to kill him."
She paused, again with her eyes on Marc'antonio, who nodded.
"And that also is the truth," he said. "She put a gun into his hands, that he might kill me for having killed his friend. I did not understand at the time."
"A pretty coward!" The young man flung this taunt out at me viciously; but I had enough to do to hold myself steady, there by the grave's edge, and did not heed him.
"I do not think he is a coward," said she. (O, but those words were sweet! and for the first time I blessed her.) "But coward or no coward, he is our hostage, and you must not kill him."
He turned to the priest, who all this while had stood with head on one side, eyes aslant, and the air and attitude of a stranger who having stumbled on a family squabble politely awaits its termination.
"Father Domenico, is my sister right? And may I not kill this man?"
"She is right," answered the reverend father, with something like a sigh. "You cannot kill him consistently with honour, though I admit the provocation to be great. The Princess appears to have committed herself to something like a pledge." He paused here, and with his tongue moistened his loose lips. "Moreover," he continued, "to kill him, on our present information, would be inadvisable. I know—at least I have heard—something of this Sir John Constantine whom the young man asserts to be his father; and, by what has reached me, he is capable of much."
"Do you mean," asked the Prince, bridling angrily, "that I am to fear him?"
"Not at all," the priest answered quickly, still with his eyes aslant. "But, from what I have heard, he was fortunate, long ago, to earn the esteem of the good lady your mother, and"—he paused and felt for his snuff-box—"it would appear that the trick runs in the family."