She stared at Otto out of large fear-struck eyes.
"You would not give him over to your Saxons?" she spoke impulsively.
"They will take him without that!"
"Castel San Angelo has never been taken,—it shall never be taken! King Otto! Think how many of your best soldiers will be crushed and mangled in the assault,—be merciful!"
"Has Crescentius been merciful to me? I came not hither to deprive him of his own.—I have not struck at the root of his life.—He has taken from me the faith in all that is human and divine,—and through you! A noble game you have played for my soul! You have won, Stephania! But the blood of Crescentius be on his own head!"
There was a lull in the uproar of the elements without; but new banks of threatening clouds were hurrying from the West, gathering like armies of vengeful spirits over the Seven-Hilled City, and shutting off every breath of air.
An oppression throbbing with nameless fears was upon them,—a hush, as if life had ceased.
Stephania, urged by a strange dread, had stepped to the high oval window whence a view of Castel San Angelo was to be obtained. And as she gazed out into the night with wildly throbbing heart, she grew faint and wide-eyed for terror. A dull roar, like muffled thunder, ceaselessly recurring, the terrible shouts of Eckhardt's Saxons reached her ear.
Would the walls withstand their assault, ere she returned, or would the defenders yield under the terrible hail of iron and leave the Senator of Rome to his doom? Like knells of destiny boom upon boom resounded through the wail of the rising gale.
She pressed her hands despairingly against her temples, as if to calm their tempestuous throbbing, and her lips muttered a prayer, while broken voices came through the storm,— fragments of a chant from near-by cloisters: