"Have you obtained definite news of her death?" I asked sympathetically.
"Yes. When we were captured in Goliba's house, she, too, was seized by the soldiers. While held powerless I saw her struggling with her captors, for they had somehow obtained knowledge of the part she had played in our conspiracy against their queen. The Naya had, it appears, ordered her guards to bring us all before her, dead or alive. With valiant courage she resented the indignity of arrest, and as a consequence she was brutally killed by those who held her prisoner."
"How have you ascertained this?" I asked, shocked at the news, for I myself had admired Liola's extraordinary beauty.
"To-day I have had before me the three survivors of the guards who captured us, and all relate the same story. They say that a young girl, taken prisoner with us, while being dragged up the roadway towards the palace was in danger of being released by the people, and one of their comrades, remembering the Naya's orders that none of us were to escape, in the mêlée raised his sword and plunged it into her heart."
"The brute!" I cried. "Is the murderer among the survivors?"
"No. All three agree that the mob, witnessing his action, set upon him and literally tore him limb from limb."
"A fate he certainly deserved," I said. "But has her body been recovered?"
"A body has been found and I have seen it. But the limbs are crushed, and her face is, alas! trampled out of all recognition, although the dress answers exactly to one that Goliba says his daughter possessed, and in which I myself saw her. There is, alas! no doubt of her fate. She has been brutally murdered, and at the instigation of the Naya, who sent forth her fiendish horde to kill us."
"I knew from the manner you exchanged glances with Liola that you loved her," I said, after a pause, brief and painful.
"Yes," he answered sadly. "Surreptitiously I had breathed into her ear words of affection, and had been transported to a veritable paradise of delight by the discovery that she reciprocated my love. But," he added, harshly, "my brief happy love-dream is now ended. I must live and work only for my people; they must be to me both sweetheart and wife. I must act as my ancestors have done, indulging them and loving them."