“No, no!” she said, impulsively. “You are kind, but—oh, I cannot go back to-night. I must enter the city at once. It is an affair—of life and death.”
Colonel Rosario was not the man to question when a lady—and the daughter of his life-long friend—spoke thus, although a king’s command and the wall of a besieged city stood between him and the attainment of her wish.
“If you do not mind helping me lead the regiment,” he said, his eyes beaming, “we shall manage it.”
He gave the order to advance. The drum-major’s baton went up, and the column moved, Hera riding beside the Colonel. The latter kept his eyes straight ahead, as if unconscious of the radiant woman whose skirts almost touched his stirrup, and Hera looked neither to right nor left. Her presence was a breach of military decorum that puzzled the officers’ minds, but pleased their eyes, as it did those of the crowd that flanked the way. Few jibes were hurled at the soldiers, and more than once a cheer was given for the beautiful signora. At the gate the musicians gave forth the national quickstep, to which the Bersaglieri march best, and the guards posted to maintain the siege marvelled to see a whole regiment escort one lady into Milan.
They passed to the inner side of the wall at the moment that Mario Forza, in response to the spurious call of Tarsis, set out from his house in Via Senato. As the head of the line wheeled into the Bastion drive by the Public Gardens Hera, with only a look into the Colonel’s face to speak her gratitude, kept on her way in the Corso. By this time Mario too had entered that street, and had she continued in it they must have met under the eyes of Tarsis and set at naught his scheme of revenge. As it was she turned into Via Borghetto, meaning to reach the hospital in a detour through by-ways. It could not have been more than two minutes after she had left the Corso when Tarsis, behind the window drapery, saw Mario pass on his way to the monastery.
From little Via Borghetto Hera moved into the Monforte Bastions and followed that broad highway to Via Cappuccini, the narrow street that bordered the rear gardens of Palazzo Barbiondi. She had gone a few paces beyond the gateway of the palace when the crackle of musketry not far off startled her senses. As the reverberations died out there rose in stronger volume a hoarse din of human voices sounding, it seemed, from a point between where she was and the General Hospital. And she wondered if she would be able, after all to reach the place where they said Mario lay.
At a crook in the street an unseen hand gave the bridle a violent pull and brought her horse to a standstill. The dusk of the narrow way had become heavy, but in the affrighted, yellow-bearded face of the man who had stopped her she recognised Signor Ulrich.
“A thousand pardons!” he began, out of breath. “There is great danger. Your Excellency had best go to the palace at once.”
Perceiving him unaware that the palace was no longer her abode, she thanked him and would have ridden on. “I must keep on my way,” she said.
But he held fast to the bridle rein.