'Nay, she is dying! She has been poisoned!'
'Impossible! Her Grace was here but now. She was dancing!'
'But don't you see? Isabella of Arragon, to avenge her lord, has with slow poison——'
'Oh Dio! Dio!'
But in the next saloon the music continued, for there nothing was known of the disturbance. The dance 'Venus and Zephyr' was in progress, the smiling ladies leading their cavaliers by golden chains, and when these fell on their knees with lamentable sighs, placing their feet upon their necks. But a chamberlain now entered, waving his hand to the musicians.
'Silence! The Duchess is ill.'
There was an instant hush, save for one viol played by a deaf and purblind old man, which long continued to pour forth its plaintive quiverings.
The servants passed through the hall carrying a bed, long and narrow, with hard stuffing, and bars at sides and ends, kept from time immemorial in the wardrobes of the palace, and de rigueur for the birth of the princes of Milan. Strange and ill-omened seemed this portentous couch in the midst of the festivity, the lights, the crowds of gorgeous ladies. They looked from one to the others mysteriously.
''Tis from a fall or, mayhap, a fright,' said one of mature age. 'She should have swallowed at once the white of an egg in which were lengths of scarlet silk, cut small.'
From the upper room, meantime, (Ricciardetto being stationed in the adjoining closet) came such a terrible cry, that the page seized the arm of one of the women who were passing with warming-pans, baskets of linen, and so forth, and cried in an agony:—