Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/176

Rh faint and distont one, of the ancient challenge, "The whole earth for the Romans."

Suddenly through the glittering gaiety of the masquerade, the magnificence of the princely banquet, the mirth of the Neapolitan revelries, an icy whisper ran; it was vague, unformed, it died half spoken upon every lip, yet it blanched the boldest blood; it was but one sickening, shameful, accursed word—"betrayed." The music ceased, the laughs hushed, there was a strange instantaneous pause in all the vivacious life, filling the palace and the gardens with its colour and its mirth; there was such a lull as comes over sea and land before the breaking of the storm. Men looked in each other's faces with a terrible dread responsive in each other's eyes; glance met glance in a mute inquiry; friend gazed at friend in a wild search for truth, a bitter breathless thought of unmeasured suspicion; there was a chill, black, deadly horror over all—none knew whom to trust. On the stillness that had succeeded the music, the laughter, and the festivity, sounded dully the iron tread of heavily armed men; where the golden fire-flies glistened among the leaves, glistened instead the shine of steel; on the terraces and far down the gardens gleamed the blades of bayonets, the barrels