"I thank you, my Verus. May the angel of the Lord watch over me in Heaven as faithfully as you watch and care for me on earth."
The priest closed his eyes a moment, then smiling faintly, nodded, saying: "That is my prayer also."
He glided noiselessly across the threshold.
CHAPTER XXI
Hilda followed Verus's retreating figure with a long, long look; at last, with a slight shake of her beautiful head, she went up to Gelimer and said: "Do not be angry, my King, if I ask a question which nothing gives me the right to utter, except my anxiety for your welfare, and that of all our people."
"And my love for you, brave sister-in-law," replied Gelimer, gently stroking her flowing golden hair, and seating himself on the couch again. "For," he added, smiling, "though you are a wicked pagan and often cherish--as I well know--secret resentment, nay, animosity, against me, I love you, foolish, impetuous young heart."
She sank down at his feet, on a high, soft cushion covered with leopard skins, while Gibamund paced slowly up and down the spacious hall, often gazing out through the lofty arched window over the wide sea. No light was burning in the apartment; but the full moon, which meanwhile had risen above the dark flood and the harbor wall, poured in the full splendor of her rays, which, falling on the features of the three noble human beings, illumined them with a spectral light.
"I will not," Hilda began, "as Zazo and my Gibamund have repeatedly done, until you wrathfully forbade it, warn you against this priest, who--"
With neither impatience nor anger, Gelimer interrupted: "Who first discovered the wiles of Pudentius; who revealed to us the treachery of Hilderic; to whom alone I am indebted for my escape from assassination that night; who has saved the kingdom of the Vandals from the snare."
Gibamund paused in his walk.