grasped the chair near which he stood to keep himself from falling.
"Why, what is this?" he cried in a hoarse, strained voice. "Gran Dio! what does it mean?"
She bent forward with a wicked laugh, and the rubies flashed forth venomous red flame in the soft light.
"It means that you have betrayed me and I have revenged myself!"
He looked at her with a dazed expression, made a step forward as if to kill this terrible woman, who, dangling the mask in her hand, stood mocking at his agony with a cruel smile, then suddenly flung up his hands with a wild cry of despair and fell at her feet--dead.
"Fool!" she said, without displaying the least sign of emotion. "Fool!"
I wished to rush forward and denounce the demon in woman's shape who had so vilely perpetrated this cold-blooded murder, but, overcome with horror, I reeled away from the curtain and fell--fell into the arms of some one who held me with a powerful grip. I gasped with alarm and was about to call out, when I felt a handkerchief dashed suddenly over my face wet with some liquid. In spite of my struggles it was held firmly there, and I gradually felt my senses leave me until I knew no more.
* * * * * *
When I came to myself it was early morning, and I was seated on a stone bench in the Piazza Vittoria Emanuele, surrounded by a group of curious onlookers.
"Where am I?" I asked in English.
No one answered, and I repeated the question in Italian, upon which a fat woman spoke up,--
"Signor, you are in the Piazza Vittoria!" she said in a husky voice; "we found you here when we came first."
"But the palace, the woman, the poison!" I said stupidly, for my head was aching terribly.
The peasants looked at one another with a meaning smile and shook their heads. I saw that they thought I had been drinking, so, giving a piece of money to the fat woman who had spoken, I took my way at once to my hotel, which I reached in a state of bewilderment better imagined than described.
CHAPTER III.
THE FEAST OF GHOSTS
Was it a dream? Common-sense said "Yes." My bruises said "No!" But certainly the whole affair was most remarkable, and quite out of the ordinary kind of events which take place in this prosaic nineteenth century. We have done with those romantic episodes in which the heroes and heroines of Boccaccio, Le Sage and M. Dumas père take part, and in the searching light of the Press lantern, which is nowadays turned on all things and on all men, it is impossible to encounter those strange events of the middle ages. Judging from my experiences of the previous night I had been entangled in a terrible intrigue, which might have taken place under Henri Trois or Lorenzo di Medici, yet, as the past can never become the present, the whole affair was a manifest anachronism. I was inclined to think that I had been the sport of some Italian Puck, but as there are no fairies nowadays, such an idea was absurd, so the only feasible explanation of the bizarre occurrence was that I had been dreaming.
I had certainly gone to the old burial-ground and had seen the phantom of Lucrezia Borgia emerge from an old Veronese tomb, and as certainly I had followed her to the Piazza Vittoria Emanuele, but here, without doubt, reality ended and fiction began. Evidently I had sat down upon the stone bench where I was discovered by the peasants, and had there fallen asleep to undergo this extravagant adventure in a vision of the night. In sleep I had dreamed a dream after the fashion of the Athenian lovers in Shakespeare's comedy, and the antique chamber, the quaint costumes, and the phantom characters had been idle visions of the brain, which had played their several parts in this mediæval phantasmagoria.
To put entirely to one side the impossibility of living people dressing themselves in rococo costumes in order to play a fantastic comedy-tragedy in a deserted place, if I had really seen all I imagined, how did I find myself in the Piazza Vittoria Emanuele at daybreak? The visionary pursuit of the lady of the sepulchre had been a long one, and I certainly could not have walked back such a distance to the Piazza without knowing something about it. But memory ceased at my fainting at the door of the fatal chamber, and revived on my finding myself on the stone bench in the Piazza; therefore, granting that the whole adventure had actually occurred, how had I been taken from the deserted palace to the Piazza?
Idling over my midday meal at the Hotel d'Este, I thought of the extraordinary series of events in which I had taken part, and kept puzzling my brain as to whether they had really occurred or whether I had been the victim of a grotesque nightmare. I had received a letter from the Maestro Angello, saying he could not give me my usual lesson, therefore I determined to devote the whole day, which was thus at my disposal, to finding out the truth or falsehood of this mysterious adventure.
My bruises were very painful, but I doctored myself as I best could, so that without much difficulty I was able to walk. Doubtless I had received these bruises whilst pursuing the unknown from the graveyard to the Piazza Vittoria Emanuele, and thus far I was certain of the actuality of my adventure. With this idea in my head, I made up my mind to go to the old graveyard and discover, if possible, who was buried in the tomb from which the ghoul had emerged. By finding out the name I might possibly ascertain that of the lady, as there must certainly have been some connection between her and the person buried in the mysterious vault. No sooner had I thus sketched out my plan of action than I put it at once into execution, and as I found some difficulty in walking, I sent for Peppino's fiacre in order to drive to the cemetery.
Peppino was a merry little Florentine, whose services I employed for two reasons, one being that he spoke excellent Italian, so that I understood him easier than I did the general run of these Northern Italians, who usually gabble a vile patois which no Englishman can understand without constant practice, and my acquaintance with the modern Latin tongue was not sufficient to warrant my indulging in liberties with it; the other reason was that Peppino, having lived a long time in Verona, knew the town thoroughly, and would be able to tell me better than any one if such a deserted palace as I had dreamed of really existed; besides which, he was also a very amusing companion.
The fiacre duly arrived, and on going outside I found Peppino grinning like a small black monkey as he held the door open for me to enter.
"Dio!" said Peppino in a commiserating tone, seeing how I leaned on my stick, "is the Signor not well?"
"Oh, yes! quite well, Peppino, only I fell yesterday and hurt myself, so you see I have to get you to drive me to-day."
"Bene!" replied Peppino philosophically, mounting the box, "the ill of one is the good of another. To where, Signore?"
"To the cemetery near the Porto Vittoria."
"The new or the old one, Signore?"
"The old cemetery!"
Peppino cast a queer look at me over his shoulder, and, muttering something about the "mad English," drove away towards the Via Pallone. As he was on the box-seat, and the fiacre made a good deal of noise going over the rugged stone pavement, in addition to the incessant jingling of the bells, I could not question him as I desired to do, so, making up my mind to wait until I arrived at the graveyard, I leaned back in the carriage and gave myself up to my own thoughts.
Then a curious thing occurred which made me certain that the events of the previous night had actually taken place, for without the least effort of memory on my part the strange melody sung by the young man in
