Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/221

Rh killed you before he faced them. I went in terror of your life every day." Her voice was low and breathless, and she clasped and unclasped her hands piteously. "But now," she went on,—"now you can go  the litter is there  the bearers have their commands from De Budry. They are to carry away the woman who goes to the foot of the Stairway, and all they need is the word from you. That I have given you. As a woman, in these clothes of mine, you will pass out safe. As a man, walking alone, you will be cut down by the guard."

"Ah! madam, how can I believe all this? You have appeared always to the world in the light of a poor prisoner. And now I find that you are no such thing, but hold the Duke-Marshal in your hand. You told me that here was a door for my escape. And I find no door. You told me that the cloister waited for you. Yet now I see that such a refuge does not enter the least into your designs and plots. Lastly, you force upon yourself and me a wretched tale incriminating us both—"

"It was the only way," she said, doggedly. "De Budry would have killed you had he thought my story untrue. As it is—" she colored vividly—"as it is, he glories in his belief. He is glad that I should be ashamed  it is his triumph. Therefore I beg you let me at least feel that he wins his triumph dearly. I beg you, go, and let me stay to—to frustrate him."

"Is that all you wish to frustrate him?  Ah! madam, if that is all, why, why have you so lied to me to-night?"

She turned away with a little cry of in- dignation, and walked the length of the room with her hand upon her throat.

"Pietro," she said, looking back at him, "when does a woman lie from her heart?"

Her eyes, lustrous as before, enchained him. He gazed and wondered. The Ice Woman, Ihe Ice Woman! Whither had she vanished? He fell upon his knees before her and kissed her hands.

"My God! madam," he cried,—"just now you said there was another way, but that it was hardly to my honor to take it. Is it not worse dishonor for me to leave you behind under slur than go before your litter in the sight of all men to-night as your defender? What does it matter what they say of me now? The litter waits—for you. I have my sword. Let me walk before you at least to the gates. At the gates De Budry and I will have our reckoning."

"Do you mean it, Pietro?" she said, and then hid her face.

"I mean that it is better to die for you than to hang for the Duke-Marshal, madam."

She put her hands upon his shoulders and bent down to him.

"Will you indeed give me your life, Pietro d'Aranti?"

"It is yours. Will you take my love, madam? It is a poor way of giving it so—at the eleventh hour; but my death will at least be the pledge of it!"

She stooped lower from her chair into his arms, and when she lifted up her head from his shoulder he found that she smiled, and that her hands trembled no more. How could she smile so? His brain began to fail him again, it seemed; but the cold handle of his sword, which his fingers sought as he rose, steadied his dizziness. At the same moment the orchard music that had been suddenly silent burst forth again. And now the boy's voice sang the air "Jour de ma vie." In it there was such triumph, such joy of living, that, with the thought of De Budry waiting at the castle gates, the song, for a second time, seemed almost an insult. Yet the young Duchess still smiled, and her eyes glowed upon Pietro. Surely here was "truth and trust and peace." In the light of these eyes death would lose its poignancy.

"Come," she laughed,—"come."

Still bemused and transported, he drew his sword, and took her upon his other arm to lead her by the little door of her oratory into the Knight's Hall. The two passed like ghosts through the great dusky staterooms to the door of the Stairway.

"Jour fie ma vie," carolled the page from the other side of the garden wall flanking the courtyard.

It thumped in D'Aranti's brain and buzzed in his ears; his blood surged gorgeously to the pride and jubilation of it.