"And is it thus we part!" There was a proud repelling sorrow in the lover's tone as he thus replied: "Is this, then, the end of our golden dream!" He paused, and, suddenly advancing, bent his head close to her ear, "_Leonora, do you love me still?_" The question was in a whisper. She started, a singular, a terrified expression mounting into her face. She was about to speak, but even as the words seemed on the eve of utterance, a crashing sound, as of some one forcing his way through the thickly intertwined branches of the neighboring vines, caught the attention of both herself and her companion, and, with a stifled shriek, she looked round as if seeking an opposite path by which to escape. Her intention was frustrated, however, for in an instant after the intruder made his appearance.
Leonora said but these two simple words, but there was a desperate impassibility in the tone in which they were spoken, that told of a heart whose terror was frozen into despair.
Zanotti, whose face had flushed crimson on the first appearance of the prince, was again as pale as death. The moon looked calmly down upon all, and God knows she had seldom shone on three persons whose hearts, in their agony, came nearer epitomes of hell than the group assembled there. Leonora seemed rooted to the spot, bound by a spell, a charm. Her small, beautiful hands were clenched convulsively together; her breath came with quick and labored gasps; her form seemed convulsed with a terrible and racking agony! She looked from her lover to her husband--a look beseeching their mutual forbearance--made a step forward, seemed struggling to articulate, and fell heavily to the earth.
"Ah, 'mid this scene Of loveliness and deep serenity, The traces of despair, and woe, and death Were darkly visible!"
SHE fell at the very feet of her husband, and he looked down with a smile that was sardonic in its bitterness. Zanotti, under an impulse that paused not to reflect that under the circumstances the action was an insult to the man who deemed himself already foully wronged, advanced with the intention of raising her, but Prince Carlos waved him back. Not a syllable had either of these men uttered. Their glances were sufficiently intelligible without speech. They seemed mutually fascinated; a kind of magnetism seemed to draw upon each the other's eyes. At length, the terrible silence was broken. It was the prince that spoke, and, as he did so, his look was terribly significant.