"Stop!" rang out the Princess's voice, clear and imperious; "stop, man, I command you. Adrian, forbid him. It is the Prince," she whispered in my ear; "I recognised his voice easily in the garden."
"Why?" I asked, hot and excited myself now, "why stop? Why should he, this midnight assassin, be spared?"
"'Tis Csaba, I tell you," she said. "'Tis the Prince. If he is slain there can never be," and she lowered her voice more deeply still, "any union betwixt _England_ and _Spain_."
"Hold your weapon, Giles," I cried, understanding in a moment what she would convey, and, in honest truth, not deeming this contemptible Prince's life worth the cost of a broken union 'twixt an Englishman and a Spanish girl who loved each other. "Hold up. Be still, I say."
And, obedient to my command, perhaps obedient also to those earlier, haughtier commands uttered in the girl's clear tones, Giles did hold, yet muttering while doing so that he would have been through the other's lungs in a moment.
"So, monseigneur," my sweetheart said, addressing the masked Prince, who now rose from off the knee on to which he had been beaten, "you are content to play the part of murderer, are you? And on a serving-man! For shame!"
"He wore his master's cloak," a deep, muffled voice said. "Until that master appeared just now at your side I thought I was fighting with him."
"Therefore you and your confederate," and I glanced at the dead man at our feet, "sought to murder me. Wherefore?"
"Because you loved him, and--and I loved you."
"Nay," she said softly, "I did not love him then; I--I do not think I did, though, in honesty, I will say I deemed him the brightest, most worthy, pleasant man I have ever known. But now----"
"Now!" came from both our pairs of lips, from Csaba's and from mine.
"Now I love him, and no other man shall ever have my heart."
For a moment there was silence amongst us all, though I stole my hand towards that of Damaris, and, finding it, held it fast; yet but a little later Csaba muttered--
Now, though I had heard those sweet words of the girl's only a moment before, these latter ones angered me, drove me beside myself, for I was weary of hearing so often that I, an Englishman, was unworthy to be the mate of any one, no matter how high that one might be placed. Wherefore, furious, and stepping up to this man, this prince who skulked about in the night with secret murder in his heart, I said, bending my face forward so that it was very near to his, and doing so with a desire to give weight to my words--