Eckhardt's eyes fairly blazed with rage.
"Secret passage!" he roared, nervously gripping the hilt of his enormous sword. "Secret passage? Are you raving, King Otto? What secret passage?"
But vainly did the Margrave endeavour to make his gestures explain his denial. Otto cared not, if indeed he noted them at all.
He beckoned to Stephania.
"Come with us!" he spoke in the same apathetic, listless tone. "Fear nothing. You have the word of the German King,—he has never broken it!"
Whether the terrible reproach implied in his words increased the stifling anguish in her heart, whether she dared not trust herself to speak, Stephania silently turned to go. But divining her intent, Otto caught at her mantle.
"Now by all the fiends!" shouted Eckhardt, unable longer to restrain himself, dashing between Stephania and the King and severing the latter's hold on the woman—"Since your heart is set upon it, I will not harm the—"
He paused involuntarily.
For from Otto's eyes there flashed upon him such a terrible look that even the old, practiced warrior stepped back abashed.
"Speak the word and I will slay you with my own hands!" spoke the son of Theophano, and for a moment subject and king faced each other in the dread silence with flaming eyes, and faces from which every trace of colour had faded.