D'Alvimar divined the whole plan. She was afraid of him; that was still better! He held the bagpiper in such utter contempt that he began anew to pay court to his hostess before him as if he were a log of wood.
But his dangerous magnetism lost all its virtue.
It seemed to Lauriane that the presence of a calm, virtuous man like Lucilio was an antidote. She would have blushed to display any vanity before him. She felt that his eyes were upon her, and that feeling was a protection. She saw that the Spaniard was piqued, and was gradually growing angry. She tried her strength by resisting him.
He wanted her to dismiss that interloper, and he told her so, designedly, in a tone loud enough to be overheard by him.
Lauriane flatly refused, saying that she desired more music.
Lucilio at once began to inflate his bagpipe.
D'Alvimar put his hand to his breast, drew a very sharp Spanish knife, and, having removed it from its sheath, began to play with it as if to keep himself in countenance; sometimes pretending to write with the point on the old yew, sometimes to hurl it at something as if to show his dexterity.
Lauriane did not understand his threat.
Lucilio was impassive, and yet he was too much of an Italian not to be familiar with the cold-blooded anger of a Spaniard, and with the possible destination of a stiletto apparently thrown at random.
Under any other circumstances he would have been anxious concerning his instrument, which D'Alvimar's eye seemed to be watching, as if for a chance to pierce it. But he was complying with Lauriane's wish; he was fighting in behalf of innocence, as Orpheus fought for love with his triumphant lyre; and he courageously attacked one of the Moorish airs which he had heard and written down the day before.