Of loveliness and deep serenity,
The traces of despair, and woe, and death
Were darkly visible!"
SHE fell at the very feet of her husband, and he looked down with a smile that was sardonic in its bitterness. Zanotti, under an impulse that paused not to reflect that under the circumstances the action was an insult to the man who deemed himself already foully wronged, advanced with the intention of raising her, but Prince Carlos waved him back. Not a syllable had either of these men uttered. Their glances were sufficiently intelligible without speech. They seemed mutually fascinated; a kind of magnetism seemed to draw upon each the other's eyes. At length, the terrible silence was broken. It was the prince that spoke, and, as he did so, his look was terribly significant.
"Come, senor! You wear a sword!"
"What would your highness have?" said Zanotti, in the low, hoarse tone of a man struggling to subdue irrepressible emotion.
"I have said it. Draw!" was the short reply.
"What, here?" The remark escaped Zanotti unconsciously, as his eye sought the extended body of the insensible Leonora.
"Ay, sir!" said the prince. "She'll heed it not. In these little plays, you know, a tragic scene is indispensable to keep up the interest. Why should not the heroine witness it?"
Zanotti shuddered beneath the maniac look that accompanied this affected jocularity.