And the earl, observant of her manner, and always suspicious of her since that memorable night in the vault, dreading lest she should have divined his purpose in taking her there, grew troubled. It began to dawn upon him that Lorelie had an ulterior purpose in staging her play, a purpose fraught with ill to himself. His eye rested on the skull she was carrying: he noted the difference, yet no inkling of her real aim entered his mind. He stared at her, trying to read her thoughts: she returned his gaze: their looks became a silent duel.
At last she reached the place where Alboin sat. The shivering music came to an end, enabling her voice to be heard.
"Ere I comply with my lord-king's request," she said, addressing Ivar, and using the words of the play, "let me learn from whose skull I drink."
She set the relic upon the table, keeping one hand over the cranium. Idris felt that she did this for the purpose of hiding the fatal perforation. But though her words were addressed to Ivar, she did not for one moment remove her eyes from the earl's face.
"It is the skull of thy late sire, the royal Cunimund."
"Not so, husband mine," she cried, with a sudden change of voice that startled everybody present, actors and spectators alike, "not so! Let us leave acting and be real.—Tell me, my lord of Ravenhall," she said, bending over the table and addressing the earl in a thrilling sibilant whisper that penetrated to every part of the hall, "tell me, whose skull is this?"
She withdrew her hand from the skull and pointed to the orifice in the cranium.
A strange gasp broke from the earl. He cast one glance of fear at Lorelie, and then sat with parted lips and dilated eyes staring at the thing before him. Lorelie's significant manner, his own guilty conscience, the circular perforation in the occiput, were sufficient to tell him whose skull it was. In one swift awful moment he realized that his secret was known to the woman whom he had most reason to fear, and he intuitively divined that she was about to make it known to all present. And then? He gasped for breath; his throat seemed to be compressed: he twitched at it with his fingers as if to loosen some tightly-drawn noose.
He knew now why she had shewn such persistency in urging him to take part in the play. "Only a minor part, a few words to utter, nothing more," had been her plea. He knew now why she had flattered, insisted, threatened: her motive was to surprise and confuse him: to entrap him into a confession by suddenly producing the skull before his eyes.