“You shall not go until you give it!” Prince Christodoridi had been coming nearer and nearer, and now he made a spring at his guest. Stepping back instinctively, Armitage set his back to the wall, but the wall gave way behind him, and the floor failed beneath his feet. Staggering helplessly, he had a momentary vision of the appalled face of Angeliké in the distance, before the wall which had opened to receive him closed again with a crash, leaving him in utter darkness on a steep smooth slope. Stumbling, sliding, clutching blindly at the walls, he descended swiftly, until he was brought up violently against masonry of some sort. To his left was a faint glimmer of light, and he groped his way towards it, to find himself in a chamber apparently hewn out of the living rock, with a small hole admitting light high above his head. The slope down which he had come was too steep and smooth to climb, and there was no means of reaching the window. Opposite the doorway of the dungeon, to the right of the slope, was a wooden door, which he shook in vain, and at the keyhole of which he shouted till he was tired. Most undoubtedly he was in a place from which it would be very difficult to get out, and he confessed to himself that he had walked neatly into a trap. For one moment he experienced a sinking of the heart as he wondered whether Danaë could be in the plot, but he drove away the doubt with a determination that surprised himself. No, she was not to blame, except for the attempt to save him which had led to this. Of course she could not tell him the exact nature of the demand to be made on him, and she had unwittingly precipitated the very danger she had tried to avert. Would they ill-treat her? he wondered, remembering her godfather’s warning. It was horrible to think of. If that absurd old father would only let him see her for a moment! It would be ridiculous to marry her without knowing that she wished it. At present she was scarcely likely to wish it, since the terrified sister had probably rushed with all speed to tell her that the English lord had chosen a dungeon rather than marriage with her. It was a horrible tangle, and he saw no way out of it.
CHAPTER XXII.
IN FORMÂ PAUPERIS.
Parthenios Chalkiadi and the two Smaragdopouloi were sitting in the loggia with Prince Christodoridi in the dusk. Kyrios Loukas and his son had come over from Tortolana to bring the silk gown and other presents to the bride that were demanded by custom from the father of the bridegroom, but Kyrios Parthenios had puffed up the hill uninvited, in a state of much perturbation. He had received a secret visit from Petros, who confided to him that he believed the Despot had seized the English lord, and was keeping him confined in one of his dungeons. As to the reason for this treatment, Petros professed ignorance so discreetly that his hearer was at no loss to divine the real cause; all he knew was that he had heard a voice, which he felt certain was Milordo’s, issuing from the very foundations of the fortress, and gathered that the owner was imprisoned underground. With a view to making repentance on his friend’s part as easy as possible, Kyrios Parthenios sent Petros off at once to the yacht, to request the captain to send a boat on shore for his owner at nine o’clock that evening, while he himself trudged up to the fortress, and breaking in on Prince Christodoridi and his friends, demanded boldly where the English lord was. In reply the Despot recounted his wrongs, which seemed to affect his hearers less deeply than the method he had taken to right them. Narkissos displayed little interest in either, for he was watching for Angeliké, with whom he hoped for a word or two in the shadows. Once he thought he saw her steal in and take down something from the wall, but she waved him back imperiously when he half-rose to follow her, and he sat gloomy, with his eyes fixed on the shadowy door. But his father took the news very much amiss.
“Holy Vasili! you can’t do that sort of thing nowadays, lord,” he observed sourly. “We shall be having a warship sent here.”
“It won’t interfere with you,” snapped Prince Christodoridi. “But if you prefer to be out of the business altogether, you have only to pay back that dowry.”
This was the last thing that Kyrios Smaragdopoulos wished to do, and he subsided grumbling. “I suppose a man may feel a little interest in the fate of a family about to be connected with his own, not to speak of the unpleasantness of such reports as will get about.”
“Yes, friend Agesilaos,” urged Parthenios Chalkiadi. “Think what will be said when it is known that the young man preferred imprisonment to marrying my goddaughter.”
“He won’t!” cried Prince Christodoridi furiously. “He will soon give in; you will see.”
“Don’t count upon it,” said his friend sadly. “There is such obstinacy in these English that they will die rather than yield. And after all, if he has erred in following here the barbarous customs of his own place, we should pity rather than hold him guilty.”
“Then is it such a deadly punishment to marry him to my daughter? You are too flattering, friend Parthenios! But it is more than a mere case of bad manners. My daughter Angeliké says——”