“Good heavens, Kingsley!” he cried; “it is Leoline, herself!”
In his excitement he had spoken so loud, that in the momentary silence that followed the physician's direction, his voice had rung through the room, and drew every eye upon them.
“We are seen, we are seen!” shouted Hubert, and as he spoke, a terrible cry idled the room. In an instant every sword leaped from its scabbard, and the shriek of the startled women rang appallingly out on the air. Sir Norman drew his sword, too; but the count, with his eyes yet fixed on Miranda, still held him by the arm, and excitedly exclaimed,
“Tell me, tell me, is it Leoline?”
“Leoline! No—how could it be Leoline? They look alike, that's all. Draw your sword, count, and defend yourself; we are discovered, and they are upon us!”
“We are upon them, you mean, and it is they who are discovered,” said the count, doing as directed, and stepping boldly in. “A pretty hornet's nest is this we have lit upon, if ever there was one.”
Side by side with the count, with a dauntless step and eye, Sir Norman entered, too; and, at sight of him a burst of surprise and fury rang from lip to lip. There was a yell of “Betrayed, betrayed!” and the dwarf, with a face so distorted by fiendish fury that it was scarcely human, made a frenzied rush at him, when the clear, commanding voice of the count rang like a bugle blast through the assembly,
“Sheathe your swords, the whole of you, and yield yourselves prisoners. In the king's name, I command you to surrender.”
“There is no king here but I!” screamed the dwarf, gnashing his teeth, and fairly foaming with rage. “Die; traitor and spy! You have escaped me once, but your hour is come now.”
“Allow me to differ from you,” said Sir Norman, politely, as he evaded the blindly-frantic lunge of the dwarf's sword, and inserted an inch or two of the point of his own in that enraged little prince's anatomy. “So far from my hour having come—if you will take the trouble to reflect upon it—you will find it is the reverse, and that my little friend's brief and brilliant career is rapidly drawing to a close.”