“‘Aye, weep away, devil that you are, and may your eyes be blinded! That I should let you run back to him! Accidente! I count the hours until I meet him face to face! Do you hear, little one? May the day be soon when my hands shall be wet with his blood! Cospetto—I will tear his heart from his body and lay it on your cheek—your lover’s heart, Christina mia! Oh, we will have merry days, beloved—merry days! And you shall remember Jézero always. I swear it on the holy Cross. There shall be no hour of your life when you shall not think of it. It was good to love you, carissima, but it is better to hate. And I will hate well, the Virgin be my witness.’
“He pulled her to her feet again; but she stood before him now with dry eyes and burning cheeks. Never from the first had she doubted his right to do with her as he would—for a wife in Dalmatia is reckoned but little better than the beasts, and the dominion of the husband is the dominion of the master who commands the slave. She knew that the law of her Church and the law of her country would give her to him; yet even then she would have struggled to the end, would, perchance, have died at his feet, had he not threatened the man for whom she would have given her life so gladly. She said that, whatever suffering had been decreed for her, Count Paul should suffer nothing. She would endure any degradation, submit to all the man desired, if he who had loved her with so gentle a love might thereby be served. She blamed herself now that she had wept. She knew that she had need of all her courage. The Count’s life might depend upon her words.
“‘Ugo,’ she said, and there was decision in her voice, ‘what harm have I done you, or what wrong have you received at the Count’s hands? Such as I am he has made me. You left me in the mountains, and he gave me a home when no other would give me bread. For all that he has given he has asked nothing but my love, and he asked that because they told him you were dead. I know well that I stood with you before the altar at Incoronata. I was a child, and there was no one to tell me what marriage meant. Was it a sin that I wished to be your friend always? If that is so, am I not ready to repay? To-night I will go with you where you will. I will be your servant as you ask—the Holy Mother help me! I will be your wife. Only speak no harm of the Count—think none, or you will live to hate the day. God pity me!—I am a woman and my arm is weak. But I will find a way—and your words shall be bitter on your tongue, I promise it.’
“She had wrenched herself away from him now, and had she willed it, she could have run back to the house again. One thought alone—and this for the life of her master—chained her feet. There could be no safety for him, she said in her childish way, until she had gone out of his existence and submitted to the agony of the yoke she had put upon her neck. She must go away with Ugo Klun, and her tears must freeze in her heart. As for the man, there had been a second of time when the love he bore for her once had rushed back and almost compelled him to cry out to her for love in answer. But the mood passed swiftly. The devil in him whispered that she lied. He remembered that when he had watched her from the park, or had lurked in the gardens of the château at night, he had seen her held in the Count’s embrace. He said that she was the vagrant of the isle of Zlarin, and that such embraces could have but one meaning. He choked the temptation to relent, and turned upon her fiercely again.
“‘Cospetto, my little Christine,’ he cried at last, ‘there is the devil in your eyes! We shall have a merry day, carissima, and you shall repeat your pretty threats in my own house. How! you did not know that I had a house? Oh! but I will lead you there, and you shall tell me your tale again. Are there not some of your friends in the hollow yonder? Per Baccho, it is good to be a dead man when the hunt is out. And I have been dead three months, carina, as the corporal has told them. Oh, surely your eyes shine with love to see me come to life again!’
“It was as he said, excellency. Hans the steward was then coming up the Jajce road, and Christine, when she saw him, had the thought to raise her voice and cry for help. But the man was too quick for her, and of a sudden he gripped her arm again and dragged her into the thicket.
“‘Say one word,’ he snarled, ‘and I will bury my stiletto in your heart!’”
CHAPTER XVII
ANDREA LEAVES JÉZERO
“There is a proverb in our tongue, excellency, which says that he who relies upon another’s table is apt to dine late. The misfortune which fell upon the house of Jézero in the week of Easter brought this saying home to me, to my discomfort.
“The Count had returned on the eve of Low Sunday. We had been then three days in the hills and in the villages seeking for Christine. Maria Santissima! there was no man in the house who did not shake with fear when the news went abroad that the little one was missing. As well might they have told us that our master was dead—aye, and better—for then there would have been none to hold us to the accusation.