Page:One Link in the Chain of Apostolic Succesion; or, The Crimes of Alexander Borgia (1854).djvu/37

 the presence of a third party at their interviews, especially if that party be children or old women!"

With this, the old woman hobbled from the room.

"O, Mercado, what can mad Seta's warning mean? Surely, she would not distress me with these fears, if there were no occasion for them. I cannot give her credence—cannot believe that my father meditates ill against you. Why should he?"

"I hardly know. But he is the head of the church, which my death would so much benefit. The immense property, which is mine by inheritance, was so willed that if I die before attaining my twenty-first year the whole of it will go to the revenues of the church of Rome. Now, were the Holy Fathers, and His Eminence, your father, to be unscrupulous in their designs, and meditate the possession of this wealth, I am well aware that it would be an easy matter to prevent me from reaching my twenty-first birthday. You understand?"

"But I cannot believe that my father would conspire against your life. He surely cannot desire to plunge his child into the misery such a deed would give her."

"Does he know of our love?"

"I think not. I have never talked but once with him on the subject of a connection of this nature between us, and then I did not let him know how much I think of you."

"Not by words, perhaps; but such love as thine is readable in every look and every motion! O, dearest Lucretia, if there should be a conspiracy against us, and by the all-powerful pillars of the church, we shall fall!"

The form of the lovely woman heaved with emotion at the thought.