And stooping slowly over the bed, with the lamp extended in one hand, the Duke glanced nervously around the room, and then with a rude grasp of the flaxen tresses, he wound the other around the maiden’s neck, his unholy hands touched her virgin bosom, with its globes of beauty heaving and throbbing as his fingers pressed the snow-white skin, while his sensual lips, steaming with wine, were pressed upon her unstained cheek, his grasp growing closer, and his eyes gloating over the Ladye’s face and form, as that kiss of pollution rested on her cheek.
“Ha--ha!--the sleeping potion,--she is mine--she is mine. The braggart Adrian hugs his death in the vaults below--I gather his bride to my arm in the cell above. Ha--ha--the sleeping potion!”
No thought of mercy, no whispering of pity, no silent pleading of right, for a moment restrained the purpose of the ravisher.
He gathered her form closer to that breast which had never been the home of one ennobling thought, he wound his hand around her neck; again was her bosom and cheek polluted by the plague-spot of his touch.
“She is mine!” chuckled the ravisher. “Mine, and none other than mine!”
The Ladye Annabel murmured in that fatal sleep, she tossed her rounded arms wildly to and fro; the potion was in her veins, and around her heart, and the nightmare on her soul.
She slowly unclosed her large blue eyes, she fixed their glance upon the flushed countenance of the ravisher, with a look that went to his very soul, and caused the arm that encircled her form to tremble like a leaf tossed to and fro by the wind.
The solitary word broke from her lips, and her look of wild gaze was again fixed upon his face. He trembled before her glance--he quailed like a whipped hound--he unloosed his hold.
“I am not,” he muttered, springing backward from the couch. “It was not me. He is not dead; he lives--”
“Murderer!” she again murmured, in that low, deep-toned voice, while her face of calm and dreamy beauty was stamped with a weird expression that awed the ravisher to the very soul.
“Even now thy evil angel writes thee liar, in the book of thy misdeeds. Even now thy victim writhes in the throes of death within the vaults below; ay, ay, beneath thy very feet he dies. Why stand ye over the corse? Doth not the pale face and the cold brow fright ye? On whom is fixed the glare of those stony eyes--on whom? On thee, murderer, on thee; on thee they glare with the accusing glance of death!”