ether, awaited her answer.

Fabrici moved uncomfortably, turning his gaze away from the stricken,
overwrought face: his cruel triumph began to seem unworthy.

But Rizzo calmly affixed the Royal Seal, covering it with the small
wooden case prepared for its protection and knotting it firmly in place
with the silken fillets--so careful lest a bruise should show upon the
fair, waxen surface--he who could crush a woman's heart to breaking, or
watch the life-blood dripping from some cruel wound that he had made, as
lightly as he would drop the red wax for his stolen signet--it was all
one to his deadly purpose.

"Thanks, your Majesty," he said, "there are yet other documents to be
signed," and he laid them before her.

"My child!" she cried in extremity; "have mercy--restore him to me--I
have fulfilled your pleasure!"

"Your Majesty hath forgotten these," said Rizzo, "and the penalty--if
they are left unsigned."

* * * * *

Again she seized the pen and wrote her name as with her
life-blood--great veins starting out on her white forehead, her eyes dim
and blurred, her heart beating so that she scarce could trace the words
that seemed an irony:

"_Caterina, Regina!_"

"At last!" she gasped, as the pen fell from her hand--"_Madre
Sanctissima_--they will bring my boy!"

"It is enough that he is safe," the Chief of Council answered her. "We
did not promise more."

The Archbishop, stout-hearted though he was, felt his soul quail within
him, as he glanced at the figure of this young mother agonizing for her
child--his Sovereign to whom he had sworn fealty. He turned away from
her to strengthen his resolve, taking a few paces forward, thinking
perhaps of that "_act of homage_," over his own signature, duly
witnessed, sealed and recorded in the Libro delle Rimembranze, "_Homagio
et fidelta che e obligato a fare a la Magiesta sua, segondo le lege et
usanze di questo regno_."

("Homage and faith, which he is obliged to swear to Her Majesty,
according to the laws and customs of this realm.")

Margherita turned to Fabrici, who seemed to her less inhuman than Rizzo,
for she had noticed the slight weakening in his attitude. "Pardon me,
your Grace," she said in a tone of quiet deference; "hath the learned
body of the Queen's Council no knowledge of the crime of lese-majesty?"

Fabrici made no answer, being conscious-stricken; but Rizzo turned upon
her with blazing eyes.

"Beware!" he stormed