"I tell you,"—Angelo began angrily, but Ignatius would not hear him.
"Too long have we listened to thee!" he exclaimed with a gesture of impatience. "Attendants, remove this brawler, ere from the high altar we curse him with bell, book, and candle!"
"Touch me at your peril!" cried Angelo fiercely. "Who dare accuse me of——"
His eyes, glaring defiantly round at one and all, suddenly lighted upon us. There in that hour of his humiliation he beheld a sight calculated to call up all the bitterness of his nature; the woman whom he loved reclining in the arms of the man whom he hated! Daphne, with a frightened air, was clinging half fainting to me.
He cast a look at her as if appealing for sympathy, but in the expression of her face, and in the quickly averted motion of her head, he read the loss of all his hopes.
I was but human—it was ignoble of me, I know—but I could not repress the exultant thought that this was a splendid triumph for me!
A similar thought was evidently passing through the mind of the artist. Despair caused him to stand immovable, staring in Daphne's direction, regardless of the people's murmurs that rose on the air like the sound of many waters—regardless of the advice of the attendants to withdraw quietly. Like a statue he stood, deaf to their appeals, till at length, losing their patience, the attendants, aided by some of of the worshippers, laid hands on him to enforce his removal. Their grasp seemed to rouse all the latent fury of his nature.
"Touch me at your peril!" he cried, struggling to free himself from their grasp and actually striking out among them with clenched hands. "Who dare accuse me of guilt? I have not deserved this," he continued, panting and breathless, as he was dragged with more force than ceremony from the chancel. "Let me go. Release my wrists. I am going quietly, I tell you. Will you not take my word? Cowards! Oh, if my hands were but free! I ... let me go ... I tell you ... let me——"
The oaken door of the sacristy removed the struggling group from our view; and the scene that for the space of a few minutes had degraded a holy solemnity to the level of a stage-representation was at an end.
"Why, the boy must be mad!" cried my uncle, as Angelo's cries became lost in the distance.