"All—as far as conditions go," returned the third speaker.
"It is not all, by St. Demetrius," cried Basil. "I claim the office I am holding with all its privileges and appurtenances, to give no account to any one of the past or the future."
"What of the present?" interposed the voice.
"You never could imagine that I perilled my neck only to secure your lord in his former possessions, which he so cowardly abandoned," said Basil contemptuously. "I claim the hand of the Lady Theodora—"
"Theodora?" cried the envoy of Ugo of Tuscany, turning fiercely upon the speaker. "Surely you are mad, my lord, to imagine that the Lord Ugo would peril his reign with the presence of this woman within the same walls that witnessed the regime of her sister—"
"Mind your own business, my lord," interposed Basil. "What the man thinks who fled from Castel San Angelo at the first cry of revolt, the man who slunk away like a thief in the night, is nothing to me. We make the conditions. It is for him to accept or reject them, as he sees fit."
A rasping voice, speaking a villainous jargon, made itself heard at this juncture.
"What of my Saracens, mighty lord?" Hassan Abdullah, for no lesser than the great Mahometan chieftain was the speaker, turned to the Grand Chamberlain. "I, too, am desirous of sparing the blood of my soldiers and, insofar as lies within my power, that of the Nazarenes also. For it is written in the book: Slavery for infidels—but death only for apostates."
"Our compact is sealed beyond recall," Basil made reply.
"Then you will deliver the woman into my hands?"