Benilo stared in Otto's face as if he thought he had gone mad.
"Spare Crescentius? Your enemy? Spare the viper, that has thrice stung you with its poison fang?"
"I implore you by our friendship,—go!—I will explain all to you at a fitter hour;—now there is not time."
"Spare Crescentius!" Benilo repeated as if he were still unable to grasp the meaning.
"The Senator's men will lay no impediment in your way,—and to my Germans you are known.—You will,—you must—arrive in time—I pray you hasten—be gone—"
A sudden light of understanding seemed to flash athwart Benilo's pale features. Through the open door he had seen a woman's gown.
Snatching up his skull-cap, he placed the order intrusted to him inside his doublet.
"I hasten," he spoke. "Not a moment shall be lost!"
And rushing out of the chamber, he disappeared.
Stephania had listened in awestruck wonder. What was the friend of the Senator, the man who had counselled the uprising, doing in the imperial ante-chamber at this hour? But,—perchance this was but another mesh in the great web of intrigue, which the Romans had spun round their unsuspecting foes. Perhaps,—she trembled, as she thought out the thought,—he was to seize the King, if Crescentius was victorious. He had never left the youth.—Had the Chamberlain become his sovereign's jailer? The ideas rushed confusedly through her brain, where but the one faint hope still glimmered, that Crescentius would escape his doom.