“You have conquered.”

She had halted, a pace or two from me, with downcast eyes.  She said it very slowly, and I stared at her and answered with an unmeaning laugh.

“Forgive me, Princess.  I—­I fancy my poor wits have been shaken and need a little time to recover.  At any rate, I do not understand you.”

“You have conquered,” she repeated in a low voice that dragged upon the words.  Then, after a pause,—­“You remember, once, promising me that at the last I should come and place my neck under your foot . . .”  She glanced up at me and dropped her eyes again.  “Yes, I see that you remember. Eccu—­I am here.”

“I remember, Princess:  but even yet I do not understand.  Why, and for what, should you beseech me?”

“In the first place for death.  I am your wife . . .”  She broke off with a shiver.  “There is something in the name, messere—­is there not?—­that should move you to kindness, as a sportsman takes his game not unkindly to break its neck.  That is all I ask of you—­”

“Princess!”

She lifted a hand. “—­except that you will let me say what I have to say.  You shall think hard thoughts of me, and I am going to make them harder; but for your own sake you shall put away vile ones-if you can.”

I stared at her stupidly dizzied a little with the words I am your wife, humming in my brain.  Or say that I am naturally not quick-witted, and I will plead that for once my dullness did me no discredit.

At all events it saved me for the moment:  for while I stared at her, utterly at a loss, a crackle of twigs warned us, and we turned together as, by the pathway leading from the high-road, the bushes parted and the face of Marc’antonio peered through upon the clearing.

“Salutation, O Princess!” said he gravely, and stepped out of cover attended by Stephanu, who likewise saluted.

The Princess drew herself up imperiously.  “I thought, O Stephanu, that I had made plain my orders, that you two were neither to follow nor to watch me?”

“Nevertheless,” Marc’antonio made answer, “when one misses a comrade and hears, at a little distance, the firing of a volley . . . not to mention that some one has been burning gunpowder hereabouts,” he wound up, sniffing the air with an expression that absurdly reminded me of our Vicar, at home, tasting wine.

“I warn you, O Marc’antonio,” said the Princess, “to be wise and ask no more questions.”

“I have asked none, O Princess,” he answered again, still very gravely, and after a glance at me turned to Stephanu.  “But it runs in my head, comrade, that the time has come to consider other things than wisdom.”

“For example?” I challenged him sharply.

“For example, cavalier, that I cannot reconcile this smell with any Corsican gunpowder.”

“And you are right,” said I.  “Nay, Princess, you have sworn not long since to obey me, and I choose that they shall know.  That salvo, sirs, was fired, five minutes ago, by the Genoese.”