He took the goblet from the table, and having flung it out of the window, walked up and down the room in silence; Bona wept.
"You would drink of it?" he continued. "There was then no poison in the goblet? But what else? For, by heaven, all is not right with this wine."
Bona hid her face in the pillows of the bed, and was silent.
"A love-draught, perhaps, for the chosen victim of your desires, and an opiate for the troublesome witness--is it not so?"
Bona started as if a blow had struck her heart, and was still silent.
"In the name of heaven, woman, what made you seek out me in particular? You are fair enough, unfortunately, to be able to dispense with such means with thousands of my sex. Why must you fling into my breast the scorpion--which must poison the peace of my future days?"
"I loved you, as I now abhor you," was hollowly murmured from beneath the pillows.
"Profane not the sacred word," retorted Tausdorf indignantly; "I cannot, besides, rest contented with this answer. What you did yesterday, the way in which you prepared and accomplished it, the danger to which you exposed yourself if discovered, all this points to something very different. You had some great, and, as my warning angel tells me, some terrible, design upon me, and that it is which you must confess this very hour."
At this Bona started up with wild looks, and her long auburn locks hung down in disorder, like so many living snakes, about her fair pale face, and gave it the convulsed appearance of a raging Medusa. "Kill me," she cried, defyingly, "or accuse me at the tribunal as a poisoner--I am silent."
Tausdorf could not refrain from shuddering as her figure stood up thus before him, like some horrid spectre,--that figure which but a few hours since had appeared so kind and graceful: he turned away from her, and at length said--