the night
deepened and the stars came out, and still her hearers listened
breathlessly, as in moments of emotion the chant leaped wildly to meet
the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its
pathos; for such was the intensity of Margherita's emotion and dramatic
quality that she endued each character with an almost startling
vitality--or had she put her auditors under some magic spell with the
compelling gaze of her deep eyes? They felt as if living in that past
time, partakers in its very action, and they surrendered themselves to
her power.

It was the tale of an infant heir of Cyprus, when the realm was young
and the Emperor Frederick was her Suzerain, and with a sweep of her
magnetic fingers Margherita showed the babe lying helpless and appealing
before his uncle the noble Lord of Iblin, to whom the widowed Queen had
confided him during his tutelage. The guardian's faith and devotion were
sketched in rapid strokes; and when the tiny King had been crowned and
his knights and barons of Cyprus and Jerusalem had sworn him fealty, the
souls of her listeners swelled indignant within them as Dama Margherita
thrilled forth the challenge of the Emperor to the Lord of Iblin to lay
down his trust and surrender the child with the customs of Cyprus to
him--their Suzerain--until the boy should be of age.

"_Not so--most gracious Lord and Emperor!_" Joan of Iblin had made
dauntless answer; "_for my tutelage is by order of the Queen, his
mother, who holdeth the regency justly, and by the laws of Cyprus and of
Jerusalem--which, with all courtesy, I will defend. I make appeal unto
the courts for this our right!_"

Her sympathetic auditors verily _heard_ the tramp of armies in the wild
chant of Margherita when the Emperor had replied with scorn and insult,
trampling on the rights of Cyprus; they could have sworn that they saw
the Emperor's hosts gathering on the plains as they watched the
impetuous motions of all those beckoning maiden hands; and then,
advancing in quiet dignity, sure of their right, the old-time knights
and barons of Cyprus and Jerusalem, moving to the measure of a quaint,
Christian psalm: and so fully had her listeners yielded themselves to
her potent spell, that but hearkening to her recital, they quailed and
trembled when she told that the enemies of the Lord of Iblin came by
night and sought to whisper treachery to his staunch soul, while in
tones that scarcely broke the hush, the false