Upward! Still upward! By winding stairs, through passages and doorways, vaguely she felt herself borne, until a cold breath of air, blowing suddenly in her face, revived her; awoke her to a confused realization of the place they had at last reached—the upper platform at the head of the long, open stairway of granite. And with that consciousness, she again sought to free herself; but, for an instant the arms held her tighter, while a dark face bent close, scanning her features, then abruptly he released her.
"Your Ladyship is uninjured?"
"Yes: yes!"
"One moment!" Turning, he left her, and walking to the verge of that open space, searched quickly the waste of darkness below, far out to sea. The girl's glance followed him; wavered; her first apprehension awoke anew. Her father! Where was he? She clasped her hands despairingly as she gazed down the Mount; then around her. Suddenly, a bright patch of light—open doorway to the church—caught her eye and she started. At the picture, framed by the masonry, which the glow revealed, a low exclamation fell from her lips, and crossing the platform, and descending a few steps, she ran to the entrance of the sacred edifice.
"Eh, your Excellency; has your Excellency any orders?" sounded a voice.
There, before an altar, in the dim flicker of candles and the variegated gleaming from the ancient stained-glass windows, she saw at last him she sought; in one of the chapels, near the white marble monument to her mother, was his Excellency; but, not alone! Before him stood, or half crouched, the man Sanchez, who now was speaking.
"Shall I ring for your Excellency's servants and have the noise stopped?" Grotesquely he bowed, the while watching like an animal studying its prey. "Beppo! Where are you—fat rascal? Consign these swine to the gibbets! What! You can't obey because your ears have been cut off and your throat slit? That's too bad!" Fiercely the man laughed; then waved his arm toward the window, as if calling the Governor's attention to the sounds of demolition; the abrupt breaking of glass! "Patter! Patter! Merry little bullets, presents from the people, your Excellency! Métayage, your Highness!"
Still the other said no word; a figure, so motionless and white, it seemed but a wraith pausing at the side of its own "narrow house." A louder clamor without; a more vivid brightness of the red, yellow and purple hues, like a sudden wealth of strange flowers strewn on the marble floor, and again Sanchez laughed.
"Too bad! But 'tis I who must pay first! Who owe so much! Has your Excellency his strong box with him? Ah, he leans on it! Such a fine one, all of marble! Not easily broken into—or out of! Eh, your Excellency?" Swinging back something bright. "Full payment, this time! Not coppers, or round bits of lead, but steel, beautiful steel!"
Held to the spot by the abrupt terror and fascination of the scene, the Governor's daughter had made no sound, fearful of hastening the inevitable; but at the moment the man, with a last taunting word, launched forward, a cry, half articulate, burst from her lips. It was drowned by another voice, loud and commanding, which rang out from the entrance to the church.