I did not understand these last words, but was left puzzling over them as the two passed through the turret-door and mounted the stairway.  Nor did I remember the custom of the country until, ten minutes later, I heard their voices lifted together in the upper chamber intoning a lament over my father’s body.

My father—­so my uncle told me—­had left express orders that he should be buried at sea.  Throughout the long afternoon, with short pauses, the voices wailed overhead, while we worked to set the fortress in order for the garrison which Paoli sent (despatching his second gunboat) to fetch from Isola Rossa; until, an hour before sunset, two monks came down the stairway with the corpse, and bore it to the quay, where Billy Priske waited with one of the Gauntlet’s boats.  Paoli and my uncle had taken their places in the stern-sheets, and Dom Basilio and I, having lifted the body on board and covered it with the Gauntlet’s flag, ourselves stepped into the bows, where I took an oar and helped Billy to pull some twenty furlongs off the shore.  Dom Basilio recited the funeral service; and there, watched by his comrades from the quay, we let sink my father into six fathoms, to sleep at the foot of the great rock which had been his altar.

As I landed and climbed the path again, I caught sight of Camilla, standing by the parapet of the east bastion, in converse with Marc’antonio and Stephanu.  She had braided her hair, and done away with all traces of mourning, At the turret door her mother met me, equally neat and composed.

“I have been waiting for you,” said the Queen.  “Come, O son, for I want your advice.”

She led me up past the second window of the turret, lifted the latch of an iron-studded door in the opposite wall, and, pushing it open, motioned me to enter.

“But what is this?” said I, gazing around upon two camp beds, spread with white coverlets, and a dressing-table with a jugful of lilac-coloured stocks, such as grew in the crannies of the keep and the rock-ledges under the platform.

“I had no mother,” said she, “to prepare my bride-chamber, and rough is the best I can prepare for my child.  But it is done with my blessing.”

“Madame—­” said I, flushing hotly, and paused at the sound of a footstep on the stair.

It was the Princess who came; and in an angry haste.  She kissed her mother, thrust her gently from the room, and so, closing the door, stood with her back against it.

“You knew of this?” she demanded.

“Before God, I did not,” I answered.

“It is folly.”  She glanced around the room.  “You will admit that it is folly,” she insisted.

I bowed my head.  “It is folly, if you choose to call it so.”

“I have been wanting to tell you . . .  I believe you to be a good man.  Oh yes, the fault is with me!  This morning—­you remember what your father said?  Well, I listened, and the truth was made clear to me, that I cannot give you the like of such love—­or the like of any such as a woman ought to give, who—­who—­”