Her only answer was to bend over him and kiss him. He scattered the sand upon the letter he had written, and when it was dry, folded it up and placed it in his bosom. Then he kissed the woman once more and prepared to leave the room. The whole scene was so real that I could have sworn that he saw me as I stood watching him.
"Do not linger," she said in farewell. "I shall know no peace till you return."
Drawing aside the curtain he disappeared, and then once more the scene changed.
A cold wind blew across the lagoon, and there was a suspicion of coming thunder in the air. A haggard, ragged tatterdemalion was standing on the steps of a small door of the palace. Presently it was opened to him by an ancient servant, who asked his business, and would have driven him away. When he had whispered something to him, however, the other realized that it was his master, whom he thought to be a prisoner in the hands of the French. Then, amazed beyond measure, the man admitted him. Having before me the discovery he was about to make, I looked at him with pity, and when he stumbled and almost fell, I hastened forward to pick him up, but only clasped air. At last, when his servant had told him everything, he followed him to a distant portion of the palace, where he was destined to remain hidden for some days, taking advantage of the many secret passages the palace contained, and by so doing confirming his suspicions. His wife was unfaithful to him, and the man who had wrought his dishonour was the man to whom he had been so kind and generous a benefactor. I seemed to crouch by his side time after time in the narrow passage behind the arras, watching through a secret opening the love-making going on within. I could see the figure beside me quiver with rage and hate, until I thought he would burst in upon them, and then the old servant would lead him away, his finger upon his lips. How many times I stood with him there I cannot say, it is sufficient that at last he could bear the pain no longer, and, throwing open the secret door, entered the room and confronted the man and woman. As I write, I can recall the trembling figures of the guilty pair, and the woman's shriek rings in my ears even now. I can see Bunopelli rising from the table, at which he had been seated, with the death-look in his face. Within an hour the confession of the crime they had perpetrated against Revecce had been written and signed, and they were separated and made secure until the time for punishment should arrive. Then, for the first time since he had arrived in Venice, he ordered his barge and set off for the Council Chamber to look his accusers in the face and to demand the right to punish those who had betrayed him.
"Throwing open the secret door ... he confronted them."
When he returned his face was grim and set, and there was a look in his eyes that had not been there before. He ascended to the room in which there was the trap-door in the floor, and presently the wretched couple were brought before him. In vain Bunopelli pleaded for mercy for the woman. There was no mercy to be obtained there. I would have pleaded for them too, but I was powerless to make myself heard. I saw the great beads of perspiration that stood upon the man's brow, the look of agonizing entreaty in the woman's face, and the relentless decision on her husband's countenance. Nothing could save them now. The man was torn, crying to the last for mercy for her, from the woman's side, the trap-door gave a click, and he disappeared. Then they laid hands upon the woman, and I saw them force open her mouth—but I cannot set down the rest. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and though I rushed forward in the hope of preventing their horrible task, my efforts were as useless as before. Then, with the pitiless smile still upon the husband's face, and the moans ascending from the vault below, and the woman with.... The scene changed.
When I saw it again a stream of bright sunshine was flooding the room. It was still the same apartment, and yet in a sense not the same. The frescoes were faded upon the walls, there was a vast difference in the shape and make of the furniture, and in certain other things, but it was nevertheless the room in which Francesco del Revecce had taken his terrible revenge. A tall and beautiful woman, some thirty years of age, was standing beside the window holding a letter in her hand. She had finished the perusal of it and was lingering with it in her hand, looking lovingly upon the signature. At last she raised it to her lips and kissed it passionately. Then, crossing to a cradle at the further end of the room, she knelt beside it and looked down at the child it contained. She had bent her head in prayer, and was still praying, when with a start I awoke to find myself sitting beside Glenbarth and the Don in the room in which we had been smoking after dinner. Nikola was standing before the fireplace, and there was a look like that of death upon his face. It was not until afterwards that the Spaniard and Glenbarth informed me that they had witnessed exactly what I had seen. Both, however, were at a loss to understand the meaning of the last picture, and, having my own thoughts in my mind, I was not to be tempted into explaining it to them. That it was Nikola's own mother, and that this house was her property, and the same in which the infamous governor of the Spanish Colony had made his love known to her, I could now see. And if anything were wanting to confirm my suspicions, Nikola's face, when my senses returned to me, was sufficient to do so.
"Let me get out of this house," cried the Duke thickly. "I cannot breathe while I am in it. Take me away, Hatteras; for God's sake take me away!"