court
should be commanded from thence. Whither now? Back--and whither then?
Back, round endless galleries, vaulted halls, staircases, doorways, some
fast, some open, up and down, trying this way and that, losing himself
at whiles in that enormous silent labyrinth. And his breath failed him,
his throat was parched, his face burned as with the simoom wind, his
legs were trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect,
failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted; there was a spell upon him.
Was it a dream? Was it all one of those hideous nightmares of endless
pillars beyond pillars, stairs above stairs, rooms within rooms,
changing, shifting, lengthening out for ever and for ever before the
dreamer, narrowing, closing in on him, choking him? Was it a dream? Was
he doomed to wander for ever and for ever in some palace of the dead, to
expiate the sin which he had learnt and done therein? His brain, for the
first time in his life, began to reel. He could recollect nothing but
that something dreadful was to happen--and that he had to prevent it,
and could not.... Where was he now? In a little by-chamber.... He had
talked with her there a hundred times, looking out over the Pharos and
the blue Mediterranean.... What was that roar below? A sea of weltering
yelling heads, thousands on thousands, down to the very beach; and from
their innumerable throats one mighty war-cry--'God, and the mother
of God!' Cyril's hounds were loose.... He reeled from the window, and
darted frantically away again.... whither, he knew not, and never knew
until his dying day.

And Philammon?.... Sufficient for the chapter, as for the day, is the
evil thereof.

CHAPTER XXVIII: WOMAN'S LOVE

Pelagia had passed that night alone in sleepless sorrow, which was not
diminished by her finding herself the next morning palpably a prisoner
in her own house. Her girls told her that they had orders--they would
not say from whom--to prevent her leaving her own apartments. And though
some of them made the announcement with sighs and tears of condolence,
yet more than one, she could see, was well inclined to make her feel
that her power was over, and that there were others besides herself who
might aspire to the honour of reigning favourite.

What matter to her? Whispers, sneers, and saucy answers fell on her ear
unheeded. She had one idol, and she had lost it; one power, and it had
failed her. In the heaven above, and in the earth beneath, was