“Lord Adrian, by the Virgin tell me how long since parted this finger from the ruby signet ring of thy house? Never parted that ring from the hand of heir of Albarone, without sudden evil, fearful doom, or unheard of death, gathering thick and dark around thy house!”
“I missed not the signet ring till this moment. An instant ago, I was in my chamber. Thy air is strange and solemn for the confessor of this jovial Duke, yet I will turn me, and seek the signet without delay. Thy warning may be well-timed.”
“Boy, a word in thine ear. My life has been strange and dark. I have loved the shadow rather than the light. I have courted the glare of corruption in the midnight charnel-house, rather than the blaze of the noon-day sun. I have made me a home amid strange mysteries, and from the tomes of darksome lore I have wrung the secrets of the hidden world.”
“To what tends all this, sir monk? By’r Ladye, thou’rt strangely moved!”
“And from my hidden lore have I learned this mystery of mysteries. When the stillness of midnight hangs like lead over the noon-day hour—when, at mid-noon, a strange, solemn, and voiceless silence pervades the air, spreads through the universe, and impresses the heart of each living thing with a feeling of unutterable AWE, then wicked men are doing, in the sight of heaven, with the laughter of fiends in their ears, some deed of horror, that the fiends tremble ’mid their laughter to behold. Some deed of nameless horror, which thrills the universe with AWE, making the hour of noon more terrible than midnight in the charnel-house. Look abroad, Adrian—’tis high noon. Dost hear a sound, a whisper of the wind? All silent as death—all still as the grave! The silence of this nameless AWE is upon the noon-day hour. Adrian, to thy chamber, to thy chamber, and rest not till the signet ring again encircles thy finger! There is a doom upon this hour!”
And with these words, uttered in a low, yet deep and piercing tone, the monk glided from the ante-chamber; and the cavalier, without a word, as hastily retraced his steps, and in an instant had disappeared in the shadow of the southern gallery.
“Whispered words!” muttered the bull-headed man-at-arms. “A ring! What about a ring? Ha—ha! The Monk and the Springald commune together—well! I could not make out their secret, but—but, the ring!”
And raising his sturdy form to its full height, with a grim smile on his bearded face, Balvardo glanced around the ante-chamber, and then, with a low chuckle, he let his pike fall heavily upon the pavement of stone.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE WHITE DUST IN THE GOBLET OF GOLD.
In a lofty apartment of the castle, hung with rich folds of crimson tapestry, and designated from time past memory as the Red Chamber, on a couch of gorgeous hangings, lay the once muscular, but now disease-stricken, Julian, Count of Albarone, shorn of his warrior strength, divested of the glory of his manhood’s prime.