."

"Then let your lips still be sealed. If you have kept faith in the past,
I see no reason why you should be a babbler in the future. And you,
Leon"--she bent her wonderful eyes with a strange mixture of sternness
and of love upon the boy, "can I trust you? Will you keep a secret
which could never help you, but would be the ruin and downfall of your
mother?"

"Oh, mother, I would not hurt you! I swear that I will be silent."

"Then I trust you both. Such provision will be made for your monastery
and for your own personal comforts as will make you bless the day you
came to my palace. Now you may go. I wish never to see you again. If
I did, you might find me in a softer mood, or in a harder, and the
one would lead to my undoing, the other to yours. But if by whisper or
rumour I have reason to think that you have failed me, then you and your
monks and your monastery will have such an end as will be a lesson for
ever to those who would break faith with their Empress."

"I will never speak," said the old abbot; "neither will Deacon
Bardas; neither will Leon. For all three I can answer. But there are
others--these slaves, the chancellor. We may be punished for another's
fault."

"Not so," said the Empress, and her eyes were like flints. "These slaves
are voiceless; nor have they any means to tell those secrets which they
know. As to you, Basil--" She raised her white hand with the same deadly
gesture which he had himself used so short a time before. The black
slaves were on him like hounds on a stag.

"Oh, my gracious mistress, dear lady, what is this? What is this? You
cannot mean it!" he screamed, in his high, cracked voice. "Oh, what have
I done? Why should I die?"

"You have turned me against my own. You have goaded me to slay my own
son. You have intended to use my secret against me. I read it in your
eyes from the first. Cruel, murderous villain, taste the fate which
you have yourself given to so many others. This is your doom. I have
spoken."

The old man and the boy hurried in horror from the vault. As they
glanced back they saw the erect inflexible, shimmering, gold-clad figure
of the Empress. Beyond they had a glimpse of the green-scummed lining of
the well, and of the great red open mouth of the eunuch, as he screamed
and prayed while every tug of the straining slaves brought him one step
nearer to the brink. With their hands over their ears they rushed away,
but even so they heard that last woman-like