"Not so!" she flashed forth, half rising from her seat, her eyes flaming with wrath. "I would not have my words distorted by so foul a thing as you! It is to be the rescuer of the girl, he before whom the lord Vitelozzo slunk away like a whipped cur! You have taunted me with my lack of power face to face with that one—and that one alone, the only man among a crowd of curs!"
Benilo paused, then he said with a hard, cold smile:
"Agreed!" And he placed the goblet to his lips. The guests did likewise and drank the singular toast, as if it had not implied a glaring insult to each present, including the one who reëchoed it.
"And now for his name!" Benilo continued. "Just to prevent a mischance."
The irony of his words and the implied insult cut Theodora to the quick. With hands tightly clenched as If she would strangle her tormentor, she sprang to her feet.
"I object!" she gasped, almost choked with rage, while her startled listeners seemed to lack even voice to vent their curiosity before this new and unexpected outburst.
"I appeal to the company assembled, who has witnessed the wager between the Queen of Love and her faithful and obedient lover," Benilo sneered, looking round among the guests. "How know we, what is concealed under a vizor, beneath a rusty suit of armour? Security lies but in the name of the unconscious victim of Theodora's magic, is it not so?"
The smile on the Chamberlain's countenance caused him to appear more repulsive than his former expression of wildest rage. But, prompted by an invincible curiosity, the guests unanimously assented.
"Be it so!" gasped Theodora, sinking back in her seat. "I care not."
Benilo watched her closely, and as he did so he almost repented of his hasty wager. Just at that moment his gaze met that of the harper, who stood like some dark phantom behind the throne of the Queen of the Groves, and the Chamberlain stifled the misgivings, which had risen within him. And though smiling in anticipation of the blow he was about to deliver, a blow which should prove the sweetest balm for the misery she had caused him by her disdain, he still wavered, as if to torment her to the extremest limits. Then, with a voice audible in the remotest parts of the great hall, he spoke, his eye in that of Theodora, slowly emphasizing each title and name: