"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.
"As you will, sir," said he, sternly, repressing all show of feeling. "But," he ventured to add, "the lady, prince. It were unnecessary cruelty to leave her thus."
"Rather say kindness," said the other, solemnly. "It were a mercy if she never recovered."
The prince drew his sword as he spoke, and motioned to Zanotti to do the same. He did so, and, even in the momentary period occupied by the action, what a world of thoughts thronged upon him! He thought of his old cloister life, when books were at once his mistresses and his friends; he thought of his first meeting with Leonora d'Alvarez; of their parting, mitigated by a hope of reunion under happier auspices; of the miserable disappointment of that hope; and of the fearful future that was before Leonora, whether he lived or died, unless--and how weak the chance!--her husband could be convinced of her innocence.
"Prince Carlos," said he, abruptly, as the other placed himself on guard, "before we enter upon a struggle beside that inanimate body--a struggle in which death may seal my lips forever--I must crave a moment's attention. Your wife"--the word seemed almost to choke him--"is innocent of any wrong at which your suspicions would point."
The prince smiled--a smile of bitter, disdainful incredulity.
"It is true, and it were useless to deny it, I love her."
The prince started as if stung by an adder, the first departure he had made from his courtly immobility. Zanotti observed the gesture, and it gave him confidence; it showed this icy statue had human passions. He added, in a firmer tone than he had been capable of using before--
"Yes, Prince Carlos, the only being my heart worships lies there at your feet; but that love is of an earlier birth than her knowledge of your highness, and therefore the acknowledgment cannot be insulting. To-night I met her for the first time in the space of four years, and the meeting was accidental. With scarcely the hope of its finding faith, I make this asseveration. It is necessary for the reputation of that much injured lady. Her virtue--her purity is as untarnished as yonder sky!"