"I did not—ha! and yet I did."
"How, villain?" He laughed scornfully again.
"Hear me, Giosué Montecino," said I: "you see this pistol? I might in one moment deprive you of existence——"
"Ha! ha!" laughed the assassin.
"Yet I will spare your life, if you will tell me the fate of my comrade."
"My life? Bagatella! ho—ho! I want it not. Fools—dolts that ye are! think ye that I am afraid to die? Here is my breast—a thousand bullets were welcome—straight to the heart—fire!" and he smote his bosom as he spoke. There was something almost noble in his aspect at that moment, notwithstanding its wildness and repulsiveness.
"Hear me, fellow:—the Lieutenant Lascelles"——
"Ha!" he ground his teeth madly. "Curses hurl him to that perdition into which he has hurried me! At this moment he feels in the body some of those agonies I endure in the spirit. O, Dianora!—thou whose very shadow I worshipped,—I who loved the very ground you trod upon!" The inexplicable ruffian sobbed heavily; yet his blood-shot eyes were never moistened by a tear. "O, Dianora!" he continued, in a voice which, though husky, yet expressed the most intense pathos. "Who was the fiend that nerved me to destroy thee—and so barbarously? Who, but this accursed Englishman! Believe me, Signor, I had not the least intention of slaying her last night: O no! none—none!" He wrung his hands wildly. "What could be further from my thoughts? Disguised as her lover—as this Oliver—I intended to have carried her off; but her endearing accents, addressed as to him, fell like scorching fire upon my heart. I could restrain my demoniac feelings no longer. O, horror! Yet I have done nothing that I would not commit again, rather than behold her in the arms of—of—Maladetto!—his name is poison to my lips!"
"Madman, come down from the wall."
"Would you learn the fate of your friend?" he asked, exultingly.