"Come quickly," she whispered, with chattering teeth, "Santa Maria Vergine! I am so frightened. Oh, the poor, poor Queen! That was why she hath been so strange—she hath truly seen the vision. Poverina, it breaks one's heart! And he but a week away! So gay and debonair, and beautiful as a god!"
There was no mistaking her wild eyes.
"I was there in the pergola, and I saw them come—the frati from the Troödos in the midst of the troop of horse—with—with It.—Oh Eloisà, it was true!—They are telling her now."
There was a stir in the great audience-chamber back of the loggia where Caterina sat—a sound of hesitant feet, as of many who came unwillingly, unutterably weary from the dull weight of evil tidings.
The muffled footsteps roused her from her revery and she turned her head and saw them coming. Her heart stood still for fear.
Messer Andrea came before the others, falteringly—as if youth had died out of him: he was pale and strange and no words fell from his blanched lips during that long instant while he crossed the interminable stretch between them, and Caterina waited, with all her tortured soul crying out for Janus.
Then the King's favorite, with the cruel story written in his anguished eyes, turned them full upon hers for one moment, that she might know—then bowed his head upon his breast and opened his arms, as if he fain would shelter her—
"Caterina——" he said—"Child——"