convert me not into this demon. Spare me this crime!"

"Is it I alone," said the duke, who strove the while by his caresses
to soothe and pacify her--"Is it I alone who have brought down upon us
this distressful alternative? Neither of us, while love decoyed us on
step by step, dreamed of the terrible necessity towards which it was
hourly conducting us. But here we _are_--half-way up, and the
precipice below. We must rush still upwards. There is safety only on
the summit. Pause, and we fall. Oh, did you think that you, a queen,
could play as securely as some burgher's wife the pleasant comedy of
an amorous intrigue? No, no; you must queen it even in crime. High
station and bold deed become each other. We are committed, Bona. It is
choice of life or death. His death or _ours_. For--scarcely dare I
breathe the thought--the sudden revenge of your monarch husband, whose
jealousy at least, age has not tamed, _may_ execute its purpose before
his dotage has had time to return."

"Where do you lead me? What shall I become?" cried the bewildered
queen. "I have loved thee, Albert, but I hate not him."

"I ask thee not to _hate_"----

"They married me to Sigismund out of state policy. You I have chosen
for the partner of my heart, and I will protect you to the uttermost.
Let things rest there--'tis well enough."

"We will consult further of our plans, sweet Bona," said the duke,
and, circling her with his arm, he led the weeping queen into an
adjoining room.

The victory, he felt, was his.

CHAPTER III.

The scene changes to an apartment of a very different style. We enter
the house of the chancellor; but it is not the chancellor himself who
is first presented to our view. In an antique Gothic chamber, in the
decoration and structure of which the most costly material had been
studiously united with the severest simplicity of taste, sat Maria,
the only daughter and child of Count Laski. She sat at her embroidery.
The embroidery, however, had fallen upon her lap; she leaned back,
resigned to her meditations, in a massive arm-chair covered with
purple velvet, which it is impossible not to think must have felt
something like pride and pleasure as her slight and lovely form sank
into it. It was a long reverie.

In an angle of this lofty room, at some distance, but not out of the
range of clear vision, stood, motionless as a statue, the slave Hakem.
His arms were folded on his breast, his eye rested, without, as it
s