, and he triumphs! I, Zenith, the Queen
of the Tribe--I, once beautiful and powerful, happy and free! I lie
here, a withered hulk, what he has made me! And a son and heir is born
to him!"
As if the thought had goaded her to madness, she leaped up in bed,
tossing her gaunt arms and shrieking madly:
"Take me to him--take me to him! Zara! Pietro! Take me to him, if ye
are children of mine, that I may hurl my burning curse upon him and his
son before I die!"
She fell back with an impotent scream, and the man Pietro caught her in
his arms. Quivering and convulsed, she writhed in an epileptic fit.
"She will kill herself yet," Pietro said. "Hand me the drops, Zara."
Zara poured something out of a bottle into a cup, and Pietro held it to
the sick woman's livid lips.
She choked and swallowed, and, as if by magic, lay still in his arms.
Very tenderly he laid her back on the bed.
"She will sleep now, Zara," he said. "Let us go."
They descended the stairs. Down below, the man laid his hands on his
wife's shoulders and looked into her face.
"Watch her, Zara," he said, "for she is mad, and the very first
opportunity she will make her escape and seek out Sir Jasper Kingsland;
and that is the very last thing I want. So watch your mother well."
CHAPTER IV.
AN UNINVITED GUEST.
Sir Jasper Kingsland stood moodily alone. He was in the library,
standing by the window--that very window through which, one stormy
night scarcely a month before, he had admitted Achmet the Astrologer.
He stood there with a face of such dark gloom that all the brightness
of the sunlit April day could not cast one enlivening gleam.
He stood there scowling darkly upon it all, so lost in his own somber
thoughts that he did not hear the library door open, nor the soft
rustle of a woman's dress as she halted on the threshold.
A fair and stately lady, with a proud, colorless face lighted up with
pale-blue eyes, and with bands of pale flaxen hair pushed away under a
dainty lace cap--a lady who looked scarce thirty, although almost ten
years older, unmistakably handsome, unmistakably proud. It was Olivia,
Lady Kingsland.
"Alone, Sir Jasper!" a musical voice said. "May I come in, or do you
prefer solitude and your own thoughts?"
The sweet voice--soft and low, as a lady's voice should be--broke the
somber spell that bound him. He wheeled round, his dark, moody face
lighting up at sight of her, as all the glorious morni
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