Dame Banfi set about disrobing, but on casting a glance at the lonely couch, a painful feeling overcame her. She threw herself sobbing on the pillows, and then, finding no rest for her soul there, she stood up again, drew a chair in front of the fire, sat down, and burying her face in her hands indulged in brooding, melancholy, dreamy thoughts.
And can there be any greater grief than when the heart fights against its own conviction; when a woman can no longer conceal from herself that the ideal of her love, him whom, after God, she loves the most, is after all only a common, ordinary mortal?—that he whom she has loved so nobly deserves nothing but her contempt? And yet she cannot but love him! She feels she ought to hate him, yet she cannot bear the thought of being without him. She would fain die for him, and the opportunity of dying will not come.
A single unlocked door separates her from him. They are only a few steps apart. How small the distance, and yet how great! She can hear him sighing. He too cannot sleep while he is so near to her whom he has so deeply wounded. What bliss it would be to traverse those few steps, to nestle side by side, to gratify each other’s longings! But reconciliation is impossible; her heart yearns after it and recoils from it, loves and loathes at the same moment.
Oh! why can we not forget the Past? Why is it impossible to prevent Grief from grieving?
The lady fell a-thinking, a-dreaming.
It seemed to her as if she were talking to her husband in a vision—
“You said yourself that we ought to part while we still loved each other, while our hearts would bleed at the rupture. Then why don’t you do it? Why do you sigh when you look at me? Why do you kiss me? Those sighs, those kisses are torture to me; they wound my heart. Let us part! It was your own wish.”
The fire had burnt very low in the grate; over the ruddy embers a pale, ever-dwindling flame was feebly flickering to and fro, like the last thought of an extinguished passion. All around the room was growing darker and darker; the light of the expiring embers barely lit up the form of the sorrowing lady who sat there, with her head buried in her hands, like a marble statue mourning over a tomb.
Suddenly, amid the silence of the night and of her own thoughts, it seemed to her as if whispering voices and stealthy footsteps were approaching the doors of the pavilion.
Lady Banfi really did hear these sounds; but she was like one but half-awakened from his first sleep, who hears but heeds not, who knows what is going on about him without regarding it.
The whispering was now audible close beneath the windows, and now and then it seemed to her as if the smothered clash of arms was mingling with it. In her dreamy state the lady fancied she had got up and bolted the door; but this was a delusion, the door remained ajar.
Then someone pressed the latch, and the creaking sound made Lady Banfi dream that her husband had come to her, and was speaking to her in a tearful, supplicating voice. She felt the terrors of nightmare strong upon her as she came within the magnetic influence of that shape. “Let us part, Banfi!” she would have said, but the words died away on her lips. Then the dream-shape whispered to her—“I am not Banfi, but the headsman!” and seized her hand.
At this cold touch Lady Banfi uttered a shriek and started up.
Two men stood before her with drawn swords. The lady looked into their faces with a shudder. Both were well known to her. One was Caspar Kornis, chief captain of the Maros district, the other John Daczo, chief captain of Csik, who now stood before her with menacing looks, and the points of their naked swords at her breast.
“Not a sound, my lady!” said Daczo grimly. “Where’s Banfi?”
The lady, thus scared out of her first sleep, was scarcely able to distinguish the objects around her: terror made her dumb.
Suddenly she observed through the open door that the passage was filled with armed men, whereupon her presence of mind seemed instantly and completely to return. She grasped at once the tremendous significance of the moment, and when Daczo, gnashing his teeth, again asked her where Banfi was, she bounded from her chair, ran to the door which separated her husband’s chamber from her own, turned the key quickly round, and screamed with all her might—
“Banfi! Save yourself! They seek your life!”
Daczo ran forward to stop her mouth and snatch the key from her; but with singular presence of mind Lady Banfi had, in the meantime, thrown the key into the heart of the red-hot embers, and cried again—
“Fly, Banfi! Your enemies are here!”
Daczo tried to pick the key out of the fire, and burnt his fingers very badly in the attempt, whereupon, still more furious, he rushed upon the lady sword in hand to cut her down, but Kornis held him back.
“Softly, sir! We have no orders to kill the woman, nor would it be worthy of us; let us try rather to burst open the door as quickly as possible,” and with that they both pressed their shoulders against the door, Daczo cursing and swearing, and calling upon all the devils in hell to help him, while Lady Banfi on her knees prayed God to allow her husband to escape.
Banfi had gone to sleep at the same time as his wife. He too had had a tormenting dream. He fancied he was in prison, and the moment he heard Margaret’s shriek, he sprang in terror from his couch, tore open the window of the pavilion, and without thinking what he was doing, leaped into the garden at a single bound. He looked hurriedly about him.
