At this reply Tanya started to her feet and behind him he heard the murmur of excitement.
"Speak, Mademoiselle," said Rowland. "What's this mystery?"
Tanya put her fingers to her brows a moment.
"Something very strange has happened, Monsieur Rowlan'," she said with difficulty. "Something long predicted--promises written in the legends of Nemi for hundreds of years and it is--it is you, Monsieur, who have fulfilled them."
"I!" he asked in surprise. "How?"
"That the Visconti should again become the heads of our order."
"What order?"
"The Order of the Priesthood of Nemi."
"Priesthood! I?" Rowland grinned unsympathetically at the solemn faces, which were mocking at his common sense, his appreciation of the ridiculous which from the first had held in good-humored contempt the signs of mediæval flummery.
"You, Monsieur," said the man in the cowl, whom they called Issad. "There is no doubt. It is written."