"Back I came at the peril of my life; content to die, if it were only at her feet. I found her cold and changed; blaming me even for my rashness, desiring even my absence. Not a word of pity to sweeten those weary days of exile; not a word of hope to repay me for all that I had risked to see her again. Soon I knew the reason—another love had stolen away her heart. There was an Englishman—one of those cursed Englishmen—visiting her daily at Palermo; and she told me calmly one day that she loved him, and intended to become his wife. She forgot my long years of devoted service; she forgot her own unspoken, yet understood, promise; she forgot all that I had suffered for her; she forgot that her words must sound to me as the death warrant of all joy and happiness in this world. And she forgot, too, that I was a Marioni! Was I wrong, I wonder, Margharita, that I quarreled with him! You are a child, and yet my instinct tells me that you have a woman's judgment! Tell me, should I have stepped aside, and let him win her, without a blow?"
"You would have been a coward if you had!" she cried. "You fought him! Tell me that you fought him?"
"Margharita, you are a true daughter of your country!" the old man cried. "You are a Marioni! Listen! I insulted him! He declined to fight! I struck him across the face in a public restaurant, and forced him to accept my challenge. The thing was arranged. We stood face to face on the sand, sword in hand. The word had been given! His life was at my mercy; but mind, Margharita, I had no thought of taking it without giving him a fair chance. I intended to wait until my sword was at his throat and then I would have said to him, 'Give up the woman whom I have loved all my life, and go unhurt!' He himself should have chosen. Was not that fair?"
"Fair! It was generous! Go on! Go on!"
"The word had been given; our swords were crossed. And at that moment, she, Adrienne, the woman whom I loved, stood before us. With her were Italian police come to arrest me! There was one letter alone of mine, written in a hasty moment, which could have been used in evidence against me at my former trial, and which would have secured for me a harsher sentence. That letter had fallen into her hands; and she had given it over to my bitter enemy, the chief of the Italian police. I was betrayed, betrayed by the woman whom I had braved all dangers to see! It was she who had brought them; she who—without remorse or hesitation—calmly handed me over to twenty-five years' captivity in a prison cell!"
Margharita freed herself from his arms. She was very pale, and her limbs were shaking. But what a fire in those dark, cruel eyes.
"Go on! Go on!" she cried. "Let me hear the rest."
"Then, as I stood there, Margharita, love shriveled up, and hate reigned in its place. The memory of the oath of our Order flashed into my mind. A curtain seemed raised before my eyes. I saw the long narrow room of our meeting place. I saw the dark, faithful faces of my comrades. I heard their firm voices—'Vengeance upon traitors, vengeance upon traitors!' She, too, this woman who had betrayed me, had worn our flower upon her bosom and in her hair! She had come under the ban of that oath. Margharita, I threw my sword into the sea, and I raised my clasped hands to the sky, and I swore that, were it the last day of my life, the day of my release should see me avenged. Let them hide in the uttermost corners of the earth, I cried, that false woman and her English lover, still I would find them out, and they should taste of my vengeance! To my trial I went, with that oath written in my heart. I carried it with me into my prison cell, and day by day and year by year I repeated it to myself. It kept me alive; the desire of it grew into my being. Even now it burns in my heart!
"During my captivity I was allowed to see my lawyer, and I made over by deed so much, to be paid every year to the funds of our Order at the London Branch, for our headquarters had been moved there after my first arrest. Day by day I dreamed of the time when I should stand, a martyr in their cause, before my old comrades, and demand of them the vengeance which was my due. I imagined them, one by one, grasping my hand, full of deep, silent sympathy with my long sufferings. I heard again the oath which we had sworn—'Vengeance upon traitors, vengeance upon traitors!' It was the music which kept me alive, the hope which nourished my life!"
The dark eyes glowed upon him like stars, and her voice trembled with eagerness.