"Well, it must be unravelled before a grain of earth falls upon her," replied Lorenzo. "Now leave me; I cannot talk more to-night."
"I must tell you my lady's last words," said the girl: "it was her command. In the agony of death, she cried, 'My husband! my husband! tell him I never sinned against him as he thought--tell him I have been faithful to him.' That is what she said."
"Oh, God! Do not torture me!" cried Lorenzo, waving her away. The girl returned into the chamber of the dead, and whispered a few words to her companion. Then both rose and retired, locking the door behind them.
Lorenzo seated himself in the large chair, so that he could see through the open door the bed and its inanimate burden. I will not attempt to trace his feelings. Twice he rose, went to the bedside, gazed upon the pale face, and returned to his watching-place; and often he covered his eyes with his hands. There were various sounds without--the return of priests--the movements of the servants; but he gave them no heed; and shortly all was silent again.
At length there came a nearer sound. It seemed in the room beside him--near, very near; and Lorenzo, starting, turned his head. Suddenly his arms were seized by two strong men, and a third put his hand upon the hilt of Lorenzo's sword to prevent him from drawing it. "You are our prisoner, my lord prefect," said one of the men, "charged with the murder of your wife. Come with us without resistance, for resistance is vain. The palace is in our hands."
Lorenzo gazed round from one to another, and perceived that there were several more figures at the door. He had no thought of resistance, however. Taken by surprise at a moment when his mind was overpowered with grief and horror, the fire of his character was quite subdued.
"The murder of my wife!" he said, "the murder of my wife! Who dares to charge me? Who is mad enough to accuse me?"
"Of that we know nothing, my lord," replied the man who had before spoken; "but you must come with us."
Silently, and without even caring to take his bonnet from the table, he accompanied his captors, looking round the vacant corridors and halls with a feeling of desolation words cannot convey. Not one of all his servants was to be seen; no familiar face presented itself; he was all alone in the hands of an enemy. The truth had flashed upon his mind at length, but how he knew not. Was it an instinct? was it the accumulated memories of many little incidents in the past, each next to nothing by itself, but swelling to a mountain by the piling of one small grain upon another, which showed him now, that Ramiro d'Orco was his foe, and had been compassing his destruction? Or was it that a dark and terrible--almost prophetic warning, which that same man had given him in the palace of Cæsar Borgia, came back to his recollection then?
That same man had said that he never forgave--that he never forgot--that years might pass, circumstances change, the chain between the present and the past seem severed altogether, and yet the memory of an injury remain the only adamantine link unbroken. Lorenzo remembered the words even then, as they marched him through the cold, dark streets towards the citadel. He remembered, too, that by a fatal error Ramiro had been led to think he had slighted his alliance, destroyed his daughter's happiness, and treated her with scorn and neglect. And now every courtesy he had received since he came to Imola recurred to his memory as a menace which he should have heeded, every smile as a lure which should have been avoided. How could he suppose, he asked himself, that such a man as that would forget so great an injury? how could he believe that he would so hospitably receive the injurer without some dark and deadly purpose beneath the smooth exterior?