e antechamber I found a crowd assembled, and on every face
was pallid consternation written. Of my own countenance I had a glimpse
in a mirror as I passed; it was ashen, and my hollow eyes were wild as a
madman's.

Someone caught me by the arm. I turned. It was the Lord Filippo, pale
as the rest, his affectations all fallen from him, and the man himself
revealed by the hand of an overwhelming sorrow. With him was a grave,
white-bearded gentleman, whose sober robe proclaimed the physician.

"This is a black and monstrous affair, my friend," he murmured.

"Is it true, is it really true, my lord?" I cried in such a voice that
all eyes were turned upon me.

"Your grief is a welcome homage to my own," he said. "Alas, Dio Santo!
it is most hideously true. She lies there cold and white as marble, I
have just seen her. Come hither, Lazzaro." He drew me aside, away from
the crowd and out of that antechamber, into a closet that had been
Madonna's oratory. With us came the physician.

"This worthy doctor tells me that he suspects she has been poisoned,
Lazzaro."

"Poisoned?" I echoed. "Body of God! but by whom? We all loved her. There
was not in Pesaro a man worthy of the name but would have laid down his
life in her service. Who was there, then, to poison that dear saint?"

It was then that the memory of Ramiro del' Orca, and the look that in
his eyes I had surprised whilst Madonna drank, flashed back into my
mind.

"Where is the Governor of Cesena?" I cried suddenly. Filippo looked at
me with quick surprise.

"He departed betimes this morning for his castle. Why do you ask?"

I told him why I asked; I told him what I knew of Ramiro's attentions to
Madonna, of the rejection they had suffered, and of the vengeance he had
seemed to threaten. Filippo heard me patiently, but when I had done he
shook his head.

"Why, all being as you say, should he work so wanton a destruction?" he
asked stupidly, as if jealousy were not cause enough to drive an evil
man to destroy that which he may not possess. "Nay, nay, your wits are
disordered. You remember that he looked at Madonna whilst she drank, and
you construe that into a proof that he had poisoned the cup she drank
from. But then it is probable that we all looked at her in that same
moment."

"But not with such eyes as his," I insisted.

"Could he have administered the poison with his own hands?" asked the
doctor gravely.

"No," said I, "that were a difficult matter. But