The group turned to go, and the secretary saw it with a feeling of relief, when by some sudden impulse Visconti stepped back, and stood looking down once at the poor white face.
His own showed neither fear, nor remorse, nor wonder, only triumph, and the secretary felt the blood rise slowly from his heart toward his brain, and he drew the stiletto half from his breast.
"Donna mia," said Visconti, speaking to her with a smile, "we must not part so coldly, you and I—I will give you a fair tomb in Verona—in red Verona, donna mia."
He dropped on one knee beside her, holding the laurels back and the lilies that hung above her head.
"This as an earnest," he said, and bent over her and kissed her—kissed the cold cheek of Mastino's wife.
The group watching stirred among themselves; no smiling faces now: each eye averted, but still no one spoke.
And Visconti stooped and kissed her again, where the dark hair lay about her forehead.
Then something gave in Giannotto's brain: a voice seemed to thunder in his ears—"Judgment!" His hand flew from his breast and up and down upon the kneeling figure, while he cried out terribly with a white, inspired face, and Visconti fell forward, stabbed through the back.
"Treachery," cried da Ribera, scarcely seeing who had done it. "The Duke is stabbed!"
Visconti clutched at the flowers and fell without a word.