‘This is not true!’ he exclaimed.  ’If Bessas had found her, I should have known it.’

’Pray, how?  Does your foolish little lordship imagine that Bessas must needs have told you all he has done?’

‘Bessas? no,’ he answered, his eyes burning with hatred as they searched her face.  ’But I have other means of learning the truth.  You try vainly to deceive me.’

‘As you will, good nephew,’ said the lady, as if indulgently.  ‘Believe as you list, and talk on, for you entertain me.’

‘One thing I have to say,’ pursued Basil, ’which you will perhaps find less amusing.’  He had lost control of himself, and spoke in a low tone of fierce menace, all his body quivering.  ’If I learn that Veranilda is in the hands of the Greeks, and that you delivered her to them—­by the God above us, your life shall pay for it.’

Petronilla’s face hardened till its cruel sternness outdid any expression of hatred possible to Basil’s features.

’Keep your ruffian threats for more suitable occasion, such as you will find among your friends the Goths.’  She spoke coldly and deliberately.  ’If enslavement to a yellow. haired barbarian had not muddled your wits, you would long ago have seen who it was that has played you false.’

Basil stared at her, his passion chilled with surprise and alarm.

‘Played me false!’ he echoed involuntarily.

‘Who is it,’ continued Petronilla with slow scorn, ’that you have trusted blindly?  To whom have you looked for guidance and protection?  Who has fostered your suspicion against me?’

An intolerable pang went through the listener’s heart.

‘That’s but another lie!’ he exclaimed furiously.  ’O basest of women born!’

A hand was upon his dagger.  Petronilla rose and stepped back a little, glancing towards one of the drawn curtains.

‘You have threatened my life,’ she said in an undertone.  ’Remember that it is you who are in my power.  If I raise my voice on one word, the next moment you will lie pierced by a score of weapons.  Moderate your insults:  my temper is not meek.’

Basil thought for a moment with painful intentness.

‘Speak plainly,’ he said at length.  ’You would have me suspect—?  I am ashamed to utter the name.’

‘Keep it to yourself and muse upon it.’

’You dare bid me think that he, my dearest and most loyal friend, has infamously betrayed me?  Now I know indeed that you have lied to me in every word, for this is the last audacity of baseness.  You hope to poison my soul against him, and so, whilst guarding yourself, bring more evil upon those you hate.  But you have overreached yourself.  Only cunning driven desperate could have devised this trick.  Listen to me again, before it is too late.  Give me Veranilda.  I take upon myself all the peril.  It shall be made to appear that I have all along kept her in hiding, and that you knew nothing