Blanka looked at the speaker with wide eyes of inquiry and wonder. She began at length to place confidence in her words.
"And you were told the truth, too," continued the other. "Oh, those two men are intriguers of the deepest dye. I was accused of upsetting their plan. I was told how mercilessly you had repulsed one of them. Really, that was a master stroke on your part. The fourteenth paragraph! He himself confessed the secret to me,--how he forged a note, some years ago, in the name of a good friend of his, who now holds the incriminating document in his possession. With it he can at any time crush his false friend and deliver him over to a long imprisonment. The trembling culprit wished to free himself at any cost from this sword of Damocles suspended over his head, and he proposed to me two ways to effect the desired end. One was for me to seduce the young artist and then, as the price of my smiles, cajole him into surrendering the fatal note."
The beautiful Cyrene threw at her listener a look full of the proud consciousness of her own dangerous charms. Blanka drew back in nameless fear under her gaze.
"The other way," proceeded the marchioness, "was to have him assassinated if he refused to give up the forged paper."
Blanka pressed her hands to her bosom to keep from crying out.
"Between these two plans I was asked to choose, and I rejected them both,--the first because I knew the young man adored you, the second because I knew you reciprocated his feeling."
The princess rose hastily and walked across the room, seeking to hide her tell-tale blushes.
"Come," said the marchioness, lightly, "sit down again and let us laugh over the whole affair together. You see, I would have nothing to do with either tragedy. I prefer comedy. Both of our arch-schemers have now taken flight from Rome; they were seized with terror at a street riot the other day, and they won't come back again, you may be sure, unless it be in the rear of a besieging army. So now we have the Cagliari palace quite to ourselves, and can sit and chat together all we please. But I must say good night; I've gossiped enough for one while, and I'm sleepy, too."
Once more the fire was extinguished and the phoenix made to yield a passage, after which Blanka found herself alone again. She shuddered at the thought of having lived for months with an open door leading to her bedroom. She debated with herself whether to stick her key in that door and leave it there permanently, while she herself sought another sleeping-room, or to yield to the charm of her unbidden guest and acquiesce in her plan of exchanging confidential visits. The strangeness and mystery of it all, and still more the hope that her neighbour might let fall an occasional word concerning Manasseh, at length prevailed over her fears and scruples, and determined her to receive the other's advances.