“Whose?” cried the queen, shuddering from head to foot.

“Mine,” said the count calmly.

“Yours!” cried Joan, drawing herself up to her full height; “are you to be killed next!  Oh, be careful, Andre; you have pronounced your own death-sentence.  Long have I turned aside the dagger pointing to your breast, but you put an end to all my patience.  Woe to you, Prince of Hungary! the blood which you have spilt shall fall on your own head.”

As she spoke she had lost her pallor; her lovely face was fired with revenge, her eyes flashed lightning.  This child of sixteen was terrible to behold; she pressed her lover’s hand with convulsive tenderness, and clung to him as if she would screen him with her own body.

“Your anger is awakened too late,” said he gently and sadly; for at this moment Joan seemed so lovely that he could reproach her with nothing.  “You do not know that his mother has left him a talisman preserving him from sword and poison?”

“He will die,” said Joan firmly; the smile that lighted up her face was so unnatural that the count was dismayed, and dropped his eyes.

The next day the young Queen of Naples, lovelier, more smiling than ever, sitting carelessly in a graceful attitude beside a window which looked out on the magnificent view of the bay, was busy weaving a cord of silk and gold.  The sun had run nearly two-thirds of his fiery course, and was gradually sinking his rays in the clear blue waters where Posilippo’s head is reflected with its green and flowery crown.  A warm, balmy breeze that had passed over the orange trees of Sorrento and Amalfi felt deliciously refreshing to the inhabitants of the capital, who had succumbed to torpor in the enervating softness of the day.  The whole town was waking from a long siesta, breathing freely after a sleepy interval; the Molo was covered with a crowd of eager people dressed out in the brightest colours; the many cries of a festival, joyous songs, love ditties sounded from all quarters of the vast amphitheatre, which is one of the chief marvels of creation; they came to the ears of Joan, and she listened as she bent over her work, absorbed in deep thought.  Suddenly, when she seemed most busily occupied, the indefinable feeling of someone near at hand, and the touch of something on her shoulder, made her start:  she turned as though waked from a dream by contact with a serpent, and perceived her husband, magnificently dressed, carelessly leaning against the back of her chair.  For a long time past the prince had not come to his wife in this familiar fashion, and to the queen the pretence of affection and careless behaviour augured ill.  Andre did not appear to notice the look of hatred and terror that had escaped Joan in spite of herself, and assuming the best expression of gentleness as that his straight hard features could contrive to put on in such circumstances as these, he smilingly asked—­

“Why are you making this pretty cord, dear dutiful wife?”