In vain the priest expostulated and besought her to confide to him the grief that weighed upon her conscience, and to receive his consolation. She said nothing but "Go!" and waved him away.
Padre Luigi passed out of the chamber. The Marquis waited in the adjoining room, and, without speaking, led the way toward the grand staircase. Still without speaking, they descended. The host opened the gate; the priest murmured a benedicite, and departed. Then the Marquis fastened the bolts and bars, locked the world out from himself and his wife, and slowly ascended the staircase. He went to the secret cupboard, where he had seen, on the previous evening, that the jar full of a green liquid was safe, and taking it in his hands, glided through the vast, silent rooms as spectrally still as when in Rome he had entered his wife's chamber suddenly.
The Marchioness Maddalena was still kneeling at her Prieu-Dieu.
"You have made your peace with God?" demanded the Marquis, as he closed the door, and stood before her, holding the jar.
She rose slowly, with her eyes fastened upon his; and tottering across the room, fell at his feet, and still staring in his face, gasped in a piteous whisper:
"What do you mean?"
He did not reply; but placing the jar upon the ground, he raised his wife from the floor, and leading her toward a huge, carved, oaken chair, he placed her upon it, and said in a voice cold and hard as his rigid face:
"Maddalena, you must die!"
With silken cords which he drew from his pocket, he bound her with inconceivable rapidity and firmness to the chair. She moaned like a dying child. The suddenness and hopelessness of her fate crushed her at once.
Tapestries and curtains hung about the chamber, and the summer light streamed golden through the windows. But it was spectral and dim to those young eyes. Upon the cypress terraces of the garden fountains were plashing in the sunshine, and in the deep shade of the trees cicadas sang. She thought of them all; she knew it well; but not a sound reached her ears.
Her whole short life lay clearly before her: the Venetian garden,
