The Ladye Annabel opened her large blue eyes with a stare of vacant wander, and smiled as she gathered the head of the corpse to her bosom, twining her fair and delicate lingers in the golden hair of the dead.
A lamp of iron, all rusted and time-eaten, suspended from the arched ceiling of a small apartment of the convent of St. Benedict, reserved in especial for strangers, threw a dim light over the figure of his grace of Florence, reposing on a velvet couch, and upon the blazing armor of the attending men-at-arms, who waited beside their lord.
A smile, full of self-satisfaction, rested upon the lip of the Duke, and a glance full of agreeable fancies lit up his eye, as he contemplated the fulfillment of all his schemes.
“The forward boy punished for his insolence,”--thus ran his musings--“done to death for the treasonable act of lifting his hand against his liege lord--this accomplished, the fair Annabel is mine, and with her I acquire the rich domains of Albarone. A servitor but a moment since bears me intelligence that she has recovered from her madness. By’r Ladye, my exhausted coffers shall be replenished to the brim! Ha--ha ha! Then I shall war and conquer. Why not _I_ as well as others of my rank and power? I shall war--I shall conquer--I shall--”
“My Lord Duke,” exclaimed a sentinel, thrusting his head from between the folds of a sable curtain that hung across the apartment, dividing it from an adjoining chamber, within whose walls were the followers of his grace. “My Lord Duke, a monk of the convent craves audience with your grace--shall I admit him?”
And in a moment, there stood before the Duke a monk attired in the dark robe of his order: his hood was drawn over his face, and, with depressed head and folded arms, he seemed to wait the commands of his grace of Florence.
“I come by the bidding of the Father Abbot, to lead thee to the cell of the blessed St. Areline.”
“Ah! I remember me. As I dismounted at the gate of the Monastery, the reverend abbot told me that it had been a custom, from time past memory, for all strangers visiting the holy house of St. Benedict, to pass an hour in the cell of this saint--St. Areline, methinks she is styled. Further, he told me the saint has the power of revealing future events. Is’t so, holy father?”