I was beside her now, and found her trembling like an aspen.

“Something horrible has happened, Madonna,” I answered.  “But it is over now, and the evil is averted.”

“But how came I here?”

“That you shall learn.”  I stooped to gather up the cloak which had slipped from her shoulders as she advanced.  “Do you wrap this about you,” I urged her, and with my own hands I assisted to enfold her in that mantle.  “Are you faint, Madonna?” I asked.

“I scarce know,” she answered in a frightened voice.  “There is a black horror upon me.  Tell me,” she implored again, “what does it mean?”

I drew her away now, promising to satisfy her in the fullest manner once she were out of these forbidding surroundings.  I led her to the sacristy and seating her upon the settle I produced that wine-skin once again.

At first she babbled like a child of not being thirsty; but I was insistent.

“It is no matter of quenching thirst, Madonna,” I told her.  “The wine will warm and revive you.  Come Madonna mia, drink.”

She obeyed me now, and having got the first gulp down her throat she drank a lusty draught that was not long in bringing a healthier colour to replace the ashen pallor of her cheeks.

“I am so cold, Lazzaro,” she complained.

I turned to the drawer in which I had espied the rough monks’ habits, and pulling one out I held it for her to don.  She sat there now, in that garment of coarse black cloth, the cowl flung back upon her shoulder, the fairest postulate that ever entered upon a novitiate.

“You are good to me, Lazzaro,” she murmured plaintively, “and I have used you very ill.”  She paused a second, passing her hand across her brow.  Then—­“What is the hour?” she asked.

It was a question that I left unheeded.  I bade her brace herself and have courage for the tale I was to tell.  I assured her that the horror of it was all passed and that she had naught to fear.  So soon as her natural curiosity should be satisfied it should be hers to return to her brother at the Palace.

“But how came I thence?” she cried.  “I must have lain in a swoon, for I remember nothing.”  And then her swift mind, leaping to a reasonable conclusion; and assisted, perhaps, by the memory of the shattered catafalque which she had seen—­“Did they account me dead, Lazzaro?” she asked of a sudden, her eyes dilating with a curious affright as they were turned upon my own.

“Yes, Madonna,” answered I, “you were accounted dead.”  And, with that, I told her the entire story of what had befallen, saving only that I left my own part unmentioned, nor sought to explain my opportune presence in the church.  When I spoke of the coming of Ramiro and his knaves she shuddered and closed her eyes in very awe.  At length, when I had done, she opened them again, and again she turned them full upon me.  Their brightness seemed to increase a moment, and then I saw that she was quietly weeping.