"Why mind such trifles since you but think of yourself?"
"You do not understand!" he protested. "Can I with honor abandon the trust which the Senator has imposed? What if the dreadful thing should happen? What if sudden sedition should sweep his power into the night of oblivion? Could I stand face to face with him, should he ask: 'How have you kept your trust?'"
Steps were approaching on the greensward.
Hellayne turned pale and Tristan's arm closed about her, determined to defend her to the death against whosoever should dare intrude.
Then it was as if some impalpable barrier had arisen between the man and the woman. It seemed the last hard malice of Fate to have brought them so near to what was not to be.
Hardly had Tristan drawn her throbbing bosom to his embrace when a dark shadow fell athwart their path and, looking up, he became aware of a forbidding form that stood hard by, wrapped in a black mantle that reached to his heels. From under a hood which was drawn over his face two beady eyes gleamed with smouldering fire, while the hooked nose gave the face the semblance of a bird of prey, which illusion the cruel mouth did little to dispel.
Hellayne, too, had seen this phantom of ill omen and was about to release herself from Tristan's arms, her face white as her robe, when the speech of the intruder arrested her movement.
"A message from the Lady Theodora."
A hot flush passed over Tristan's face, giving way to a deadly pallor as, hesitating to take the proffered tablet, he replied with ill-concealed vexation:
"Whom does the Lady Theodora honor by sending so ill-favored a messenger?"