t its height, the duke, adopting
gradually a more serious tone of conversation, said--

"Has it never occurred to you, charming Bona, that the most exalted of
your sex share with the humblest this one privilege--love alone must
be the motive which brings a suitor to their feet. That passion must
be genuine, must be fever-high, which makes a subject quite forget his
Queen in the lovely woman before him, and tempts him to dare the
vengeance of a Monarch, as well as of a husband."

"True, there is danger--perhaps to both of us," she replied, "but it
daunts us not."

"No;--but it is at hand."

"What mean you, Glinski?"

"We are betrayed."

"How?--by whom?"

"How, or by whom, it matters little; but that subtle demon, Count
Laski, knows that which in his hands is a warrant for our
destruction."

"What is to be done? We will bribe him. All my jewels, all my hoards
shall go to purchase his silence."

"Bribe Laski! bribe the north wind! bribe destiny itself, whose nature
it is to distribute good and ill, but to feel neither. No, but I would
have a dagger in his throat before the night were passed, but that his
short light slumbers are guarded by a slave of singular power, whom
the villains fear to attack. I had meant to beg or buy of him this
same fierce automaton, but something broke off the treaty."

"We will poison the mind of the king against him: he shall be
dismissed from all his offices."

"That poison is too slow. Besides, if he once communicate his
suspicions to the king--which at this very moment he may be doing--see
you not, that it is no longer the minister, but the jealous monarch
that we have to guard against. Hear me, Bona, one of two fates must
now be mine. Death--or thy hand, and with it the crown of Poland. Do
not start. There is for _me_ no middle station. You may be safe. A few
tears, a few smiles, and the old king will lapse into his dotage."

"You speak in riddles, Glinski; I comprehend nothing of all this."

"Yet it is clear enough. Thus it stands: the Duke of Lithuania loved
the wife of Sigismund, king of Poland. Love!--I call to witness all
the saints in heaven!--love alone prompted his daring suit. But now
that fortune has first favoured and then betrayed him, where think you
does his safety lie? Where, but in the bold enterprises of ambition?
His only place of refuge is a throne. He who has won a queen must
protect her with a sceptre. You must be mine--my very queen--you must
extend y