"What is this," exclaimed Bona, suddenly starting up—"what is this you would tempt me to? You dare
not even name the horrid deed you would have me commit. Avaunt! you are a devil, Albert Glinski!—you would drag me to perdition." Then, falling in tears upon his neck, she implored him not to tempt her further. "Oh, Albert! Albert!" she cried, "I beseech you, plunge me not into this pit of guilt. You can! I feel you can. Have mercy! I implore you, I charge you on your soul, convert me not into this demon. Spare me this crime!"
"Is it I alone," said the duke, who strove the while by his caresses to soothe and pacify her—"Is it I alone who have brought down upon us this distressful alternative? Neither of us, while love decoyed us on step by step, dreamed of the terrible necessity towards which it was hourly conducting us. But here we are—half-way up, and the precipice below. We must rush still upwards. There is safety only on the summit. Pause, and we fall. Oh, did you think that you, a queen, could play as securely as some burgher's wife the pleasant comedy of an amorous intrigue? No, no; you must queen it even in crime. High station and bold deed become each other. We are committed, Bona. It is choice of life or death. His death or ours. For—scarcely dare I breathe the thought—the sudden revenge of your monarch husband, whose jealousy at least, age has not tamed, may execute its purpose before his dotage has had time to return."
"Where do you lead me? What shall I become?" cried the bewildered queen. "I have loved thee, Albert, but I hate not him."
"I ask thee not to hate"——
"They married me to Sigismund out of state policy. You I have chosen for the partner of my heart, and I will protect you to the uttermost. Let things rest there—'tis well enough."
"We will consult further of our plans, sweet Bona," said the duke, and, circling her with his arm, he led the weeping queen into an adjoining room.
The victory, he felt, was his.
Chapter III.
The scene changes to an apartment of a very different style. We enter the house of the chancellor; but it is not the chancellor himself who is first presented to our view. In an antique Gothic chamber, in the decoration and structure of which the most costly material had been studiously united with the severest simplicity of taste, sat Maria, the only daughter and child of Count Laski. She sat at her embroidery. The embroidery, however, had fallen upon her lap; she leaned back, resigned to her meditations, in a massive arm-chair covered with purple velvet, which it is impossible not to think must have felt something like pride and pleasure as her slight and lovely form sank into it. It was a long reverie.