"Aye! call! call! here no one can hear you but the God of Revenge! Do you think I have bridled my hate for months in vain? How often, how easily could I have reached you, with dagger or poison, at Ravenna! But no; I have decoyed you here. At the monument of my murdered cousins; an hour ago at your bedside; I with difficulty restrained my uplifted hand--but slowly, inch by inch, shall you die. I will watch for hours the growing agony of your death."
"Terrible! Oh, terrible!"
"What are hours compared with the long years during which I was martyred by the thought of my disfigurement, of your beauty and your possession of my lover! But you shall repent it!"
"What will you do?" cried the terrified woman, again and again seeking some outlet in the walls.
"I will drown you, slowly and surely, in the waterworks of this bath, which your friend Cassiodorus built. You do not know what tortures of jealousy and impotent rage I endured in this house when your wedding with Eutharic was celebrated, and I was compelled to serve in your train. In this room, you proud woman, I unloosed your sandals, and dried your fair limbs--in this room you shall die?"
She touched a spring in the wall.
The floor of the basin, the round metal plate, divided into two halves, which slid slowly into the walls on the right and left.
With horror the imprisoned woman looked down from the narrow gallery into the chasm thus opened at her feet.
"Remember that day in the meadow!" cried Gothelindis; and in the lower story the sluices were suddenly opened, and the waters of the lake rushed in, roaring and hissing, and rose higher and higher with fearful rapidity.
Amalaswintha saw certain death before her. She saw the impossibility of escape, or of softening her fiendish enemy by prayers. At this crisis, the hereditary courage of the Amelungs returned to her; she composed herself, and was reconciled to her fate.