"You have been to them? You will be avenged! Tell me that it is so?"
A little choking sob escaped from him. The numbness was passing away from his heart and senses. His sorrows were becoming human, and demanding human expression.
"Alas, Margharita, alas!" he cried, with drooping head, "the bitterest disappointment of my life came upon me all unawares. While I have lain rotting in prison history has turned over many pages. The age for secret societies has gone by. The 'Order of the White Hyacinth' is no more—worse than that, its very name has been dragged through the dust. One by one the old members fell away; its sacred aims were forgotten. The story of its downward path will never be written. A few coarse, ignorant men meet in a pothouse, night by night, to spend the money I sent in beer and foul tobacco. That is the end of the 'Order of the White Hyacinth!'"
Margharita looked like a beautiful wild animal in her passion. Her hair had fallen all over her face, and was streaming down her back. Her small white hand was clenched and upraised, and her straight, supple figure, panther-like in its grace, was distended until she towered over the little shrunken form before her. Terrible was the gleam in her eyes, and terrible the fixed rigidity of her features. Yet she was as beautiful as a young goddess in her wrath.
"No!" she cried fiercely, "the Order shall not die! You belong to it still; and I—I, too, swear the oath of vengeance! Together we will hunt her down—this woman! She shall suffer!"
"She shall die!" he cried.
A slight shudder passed across the girl's face, but she repeated his words.
"She shall die! But, uncle, you are ill. What is it?"
She chafed his hands and held him up. He had fainted.