o her side, for the shadows were
lengthening and a crimson light flamed in the West.

"Daughter," he said with deep solemnity, "it hath come to me with full
light in answer to thy question, that thou, being crowned Queen and
consecrated in the Duomo of Nikosia, together with King Janus, thy
husband--whom this people loved--and decreed by him to hold this realm,
which--for the first time in many years, and by his hand, is now united
under one sovereign, that thy duty biddeth thee hold and rule it against
all other claimants--were it even Carlotta who hath once been called its
Queen.

"Rule thou this people with the fear of Heaven in thy true heart--so God
shall make thee wise!"

She came slowly, as to a heavy task, and knelt before him, with clasped
hands, kissing the crucifix which he held out to her; the red light
streamed through the arches with a fierce illumination.

"Father--and Janus!" she cried--"hear my vow!

"To do for my people as Heaven and the Madonna shall teach me: to bear
them in my heart and seek their happiness; to live for them alone! And
if harm hath been--oh God, if harm hath been done--to nerve me to the
more strenuous duty, that wrong may be forgiven!"

XV

It was a moonless night in June, with lowering clouds and a threat of
distant thunder echoing from the far mountains.

A crowd was gathering, low-voiced and eager, in the Piazza San Nicolo: a
crowd chiefly of the people, and the faces and costumes of many races
came out grotesquely under the spasmodic glare of the torches which
flared about the standard of Cyprus, in the centre of the square--the
standard was tied with mourning and wreathed with cypress. There were
many women--here and there a peasant with a child slumbering in her
arms, or clinging sleepily to the tawny silk scarf woven under her own
mulberry trees. Here and there, with the fitful motion of the wind, the
light touched the fair hair of a chance peasant from the province of _La
Kythrea_ into gleams of gold that a Venetian patrician might envy, or
brought into sudden relief the smothered passion of some beautiful, dark
Greek face. But the women were chiefly of the lower Cypriote
peasant-type, heavy-featured and unemotional. There was a sprinkling of
monkish cowls and of the red fez from the Turkish village of Afdimou
which lay in seeming friendliness of relation close to the village of
Ormodos, whose population was wholly Greek.

In front of the long facade of t