The lady fell a-thinking, a-dreaming.
It seemed to her as if she were talking to her husband in a vision—
"You said yourself that we ought to part while we still loved each other, while our hearts would bleed at the rupture. Then why don't you do it? Why do you sigh when you look at me? Why do you kiss me? Those sighs, those kisses are torture to me; they wound my heart. Let us part! It was your own wish."
The fire had burnt very low in the grate; over the ruddy embers a pale, ever-dwindling flame was feebly flickering to and fro, like the last thought of an extinguished passion. All around the room was growing darker and darker; the light of the expiring embers barely lit up the form of the sorrowing lady who sat there, with her head buried in her hands, like a marble statue mourning over a tomb.
Suddenly, amid the silence of the night and of her own thoughts, it seemed to her as if whispering voices and stealthy footsteps were approaching the doors of the pavilion.
Lady Banfi really did hear these sounds; but she was like one but half-awakened from his first sleep, who hears but heeds not, who knows what is going on about him without regarding it.
The whispering was now audible close beneath the windows, and now and then it seemed to her as if the smothered clash of arms was mingling with it. In her dreamy state the lady fancied she had got up and bolted the door; but this was a delusion, the door remained ajar.
Then some one pressed the latch, and the creaking sound made Lady Banfi dream that her husband had come to her, and was speaking to her in a tearful, supplicating voice. She felt the terrors of nightmare strong upon her as she came within the magnetic influence of that shape. "Let us part, Banfi!" she would have said, but the words died away on her lips. Then the dream-shape whispered to her—"I am not Banfi, but the headsman!" and seized her hand.
At this cold touch Lady Banfi uttered a shriek and started up.
Two men stood before her with drawn swords. The lady looked into their faces with a shudder. Both were well known to her. One was Caspar Kornis, chief captain of the Maros district, the other John Daczo, chief captain of Csik, who now stood before her with menacing looks, and the points of their naked swords at her breast.