Page:In the name of a woman (1900).djvu/44

 CHAPTER IV

"THE WEB IS WIDE, THE MESHES HARD TO BREAK"

"As beautiful as an angel, and with the heart of a vampire."

This bitter description rushed to my thoughts as I gazed at the Princess Christina. Surely never had treachery, cruelty, and ambition a fairer guise than hers, if treacherous and cruel she could be.

But the thought started another suspicion. Had this scene all been planned by her to catch me in the toils? It was a dramatic enough entrance for me into her circle, and certainly clever. It had been made to appear as if I had forced my way into the house, had overheard a compromising secret, had had my very life placed in danger, and then at the critical moment it was to her coming I owed my safety. If this were so, I could understand why the less hot-headed of my two assailants had first rushed to the assistance of his comrade, but had then refrained from pressing the advantage of the odds against me in the fight, and had not attempted even to wound me.

Could that lovely, ingenuous-looking woman have laid such a scheme, and then have carried it out with such shrewd stage-management, putting that little ring of anger into her voice at all the clatter of the fight?

If so the danger that had seemed to threaten me had never existed, and I might as well do as she bade, and put up the sword which had never been needed in