CHAPTER VI.
INSANITY AND REVENGE.
Barbesieur followed Carlotta to the garden. They were walking silently down the great avenue that led to the conservatory, when, at some distance, they beheld advancing toward them the figure of a man. His step was feeble and slow; his black garments hung loosely about his shrunken limbs; his face was bloodless, like that of a corpse, his cheeks hollow, his large eyes so sunken that their light seemed to come from the depths of a cavern. His sparse hair, lightly blown about by the wind, was white as snow; his long, thin beard was of the same hue.
"Who is that strange-looking old man?" asked Barbesieur.
"That, my lord, is the Marquis Strozzi!"
"Impossible!" cried Barbesieur, with a start.
"I told you. my lord, that he looked like a decrepit old man," said
Carlotta.
"And truly he is not a very seductive-looking personage," answered Barbesieur. "But we must try if, in this extinguished crater, there be not a spark by which its fire may be rekindled. Leave me, Carlotta. I must have no third person here to divert Strozzi's attention from myself."
"Shall I not announce you, my lord?" asked Carlotta, who was dying of curiosity to see the meeting.
"Not at all, my angel. Go back to the castle—not by that winding path, if you please, but by this wide avenue. And—be alert in your movements, for I shall watch you until yonder door closes upon your youthful charms, and hides them from my sight."