“None of your smooth, put-on looks for me, fellow. I want deeds, not smirks. You came here as a famous plothunter, a sort of stoat, to pull conspirators out of their nests, or suck their eggs for me. I have seen nothing of this so far; and yet you have had plenty of money to set you up in business. These Christians will afford you plenty of game; so make yourself ready, and let us see what you can do. You know my ways; you had better look sharp about you, therefore, or you may have to look at something very sharp before you. The property of the convicted will be divided between the accusers and the treasury; unless I see particular reasons for taking the whole to myself. Now you may go.”
Monogram of Christ, found in the Catacombs.
Most thought that these particular reasons would turn out to be very general.
CHAPTER VII.
DARK DEATH.
When, therefore, it was announced to her that the officer Sebastian wished to speak to her alone, in one of the halls below, her heart beat at the unusual tidings, and conjured up a thousand strange fancies, about the possible topics of his interview. This agitation was not diminished, when, after apologizing for his seeming intrusion, he remarked with a smile, that, well knowing how sufficiently she was already annoyed by the many candidates for her hand, he felt regret at the idea that he was going to add another, yet undeclared, to her list. If this ambiguous preface surprised, and perhaps elated her, she was soon depressed again, upon being told it was the vulgar and stupid Corvinus. For her father, even, little as he knew how to discriminate characters out of business, had seen enough of him at his late banquet to characterize him to his daughter by those epithets.
Sebastian, fearing rather the physical, than the moral activity of Afra’s drugs, thought it right to inform her of the compact between the two dabblers in the black art, the principal efficacy of which, however, seemed to consist in drawing money from the purse of a reluctant dupe. He of course said nothing of what related to the Christians in that dialogue. He put her on her guard, and she promised to prevent the nightly excursions of her necromancer slave. What Afra had engaged to do, she did not for a moment believe it was ever her intention to attempt; neither did she fear arts which she utterly despised. Indeed Afra’s last soliloquy seemed satisfactorily to prove that she was only deceiving her victim. But she certainly felt indignant at having been bargained about by two such vile characters, and having been represented as a grasping avaricious woman, whose price was gold.
“I feel,” she said at last to Sebastian, “how very kind it is of you, to come thus to put me on my guard; and I admire the delicacy with which you have unfolded so disagreeable a matter, and the tenderness with which you have treated every one concerned.”
“I have only done in this instance,” replied the soldier, “what I should have done for any human being,—save him, if possible, from pain or danger.”