And while all was intense interest and suspense, while a mingled feeling of surprise and terror and nameless fear ran around the group, while every eye was fixed upon the kneeling form of Albertine, with the goblet upraised in his hand, the hound Saladin passed from man to man, scenting the garments of the bystanders, and glancing wildly from face to face, from eye to eye.
He paused for a moment in front of the Signor Aldarin, and uttered a low whining sound as he gazed in the scholar’s face.
“How long is this mummery to last?” exclaimed Aldarin, advancing with a sudden step—“Tell me, Sir Monk, is thy study over?”
The hound Saladin sprang suddenly aside from the robes of the Signor, and eagerly snuffing the marble floor, approached the monk Albertine, and with a moaning sound licked the white substance from the diamond-shaped stone.
“Is it poison?” asked the Duke, and the interest of the group clustered around became absorbing and intense.
“Some new mysterie of thine, learned scholar!” exclaimed Adrian Di Albarone, with a smile of incredulity. “The man does not live, so false in heart as to place a death-bowl to the lips of a warrior like Julian of Albarone!”
“Is it poison!” exclaimed Albertine, gazing round upon the group—“Behold!”
And as he spoke, the hound Saladin fell stiffened and dead, upon the marble pavement, with a single fearful struggle, a single terrible howl.—His limbs were fearfully distorted, and his eyes were starting from their sockets, while a thin white foam hung round his serpent-like jaw.
A confused cry of horror thundered around the apartment, and then you might have heard the footsteps of the Invisible Death, all was so fearfully silent and still.
“As God lives, my father has been murdered!” shouted Adrian Di Albarone, as the expression of incredulity lately visible in his manly face changed to a look of pallid horror—“Now, by the Sacrament of God, he shall be avenged as never was murdered man avenged before! Who,” he shrieked in a husky voice, turning to the throng—“Who hath done this murder?”