“Lo! thou art in the ducal hall of Florence: behold thyself encircled by the gay and glittering throng; a thousand eyes are fixed upon thee in admiration, a thousand tongues speak their words of eloquence but to syllable that admiration, and a thousand swords, flashing in the light, are slaves to the slightest word of Ladye Annabel—the queen.
“The robes of a queen shall gird this lovely form, the stars of a coronet shall flash from that beauteous brow, and this fair hand, so beautiful in its alabaster whiteness, shall wave the sceptre over the heads of kneeling myriads! With a queenly port and a flashing eye, thou shalt look around thee, and behold the princely halls illumined by lamps, diffusing at once both light, soft as moonbeams, and fragrance sweeter than the breath of spring flowers. The lofty windows, with their rare carvings, shall give to view gardens rich with golden fruit, won from the far lands of the East, fragrant with shrubbery and gay with flowers, while ancient trees, in leafy magnificence, sweep their arching bows overhead. Fountains fling their columns of liquid diamonds up from the arbored paths, lulling waterfalls soothe the ear, distant music wakes delightful visions in the soul, solemn palaces, in all their grandeur of outline, break through the air of night! Palaces, gardens, unbounded wealth, rank, pride, place, honor—all, all shall be thine own!”
“All, my father, all—all—but love.”
As Annabel spoke, her eyes filled with tears, and her voice was choked with the sobs that convulsed her bosom.
To say that the picture of the Count had no effect upon the maiden, would be uttering an absurd and unnatural fiction. In bright and glowing colors arose the gorgeous pageantry before the mind of Annabel: it was all saith the Chronicler of the ancient MSS.—it was all that a woman could wish, the fruition of a woman’s most ardent aspiration. With Adrian, the companion of her childhood, the princely palace would have been like an abode of fairy land; with the Duke, it would have been a tomb—a golden sepulchre for the living-dead.
The answer of Aldarin was contemptuous and bitter.
“Love!—a dream—a phantom—a bubble!—Love, forsooth! the vision of warm-blooded youth, which all have felt, and none but fools obey, Girl,” continued he, “I have said that thou shouldst wed the Duke, and—by my soul!—thou shalt wed him! My word—the word of Aldarin—is passed. Think not to deceive me. I know thy motive in thus setting the bidding of a father at defiance. It is because thou dost affect the murderer of my only brother,—of thy kind uncle,—the PARRICIDE, Adrian—”
“O! father, he cannot—cannot be the doer of so dread a crime.”
“Who, then,” exclaimed the Count, bitterly, “who then was the doer of so dread a crime? Speak, my fair daughter, who was’t?”
“It was thou! Thou! Aldarin the Scholar!” exclaimed a voice that sounded strange and hollow through the lonely apartment.