“Ladye!” cried the monk, as he advanced to the side of the Ladye Annabel, raising the maiden, whose senses seemed stupified with horror, from the floor, “behold the corse of thy love! Advance, Ladye—rest thee by its side—gather the head of the corse to thy bosom! Watch beside the corse one hour—a single hour—and let nor man nor devil wrest the lifeless body from thy grasp!”
The Ladye Annabel opened her large blue eyes with a stare of vacant wander, and smiled as she gathered the head of the corpse to her bosom, twining her fair and delicate lingers in the golden hair of the dead.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
THE CELL OF ST. ARELINE.
A lamp of iron, all rusted and time-eaten, suspended from the arched ceiling of a small apartment of the convent of St. Benedict, reserved in especial for strangers, threw a dim light over the figure of his grace of Florence, reposing on a velvet couch, and upon the blazing armor of the attending men-at-arms, who waited beside their lord.
A smile, full of self-satisfaction, rested upon the lip of the Duke, and a glance full of agreeable fancies lit up his eye, as he contemplated the fulfillment of all his schemes.
“The forward boy punished for his insolence,”—thus ran his musings—“done to death for the treasonable act of lifting his hand against his liege lord—this accomplished, the fair Annabel is mine, and with her I acquire the rich domains of Albarone. A servitor but a moment since bears me intelligence that she has recovered from her madness. By’r Ladye, my exhausted coffers shall be replenished to the brim! Ha—ha ha! Then I shall war and conquer. Why not I as well as others of my rank and power? I shall war—I shall conquer—I shall—”
“My Lord Duke,” exclaimed a sentinel, thrusting his head from between the folds of a sable curtain that hung across the apartment, dividing it from an adjoining chamber, within whose walls were the followers of his grace. “My Lord Duke, a monk of the convent craves audience with your grace—shall I admit him?”
“Aye, let him enter.”
And in a moment, there stood before the Duke a monk attired in the dark robe of his order: his hood was drawn over his face, and, with depressed head and folded arms, he seemed to wait the commands of his grace of Florence.
“Thy errand, sir monk?”