University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

It was the first night of the carnival of Rome.
There was a masked ball. Lords, dukes, princes,
and noble ladies thronged the splendid dome. A
gorgeous tide of fashion heaved and swelled to its
utmost height.

Could all the thoughts and feelings—all the burning
passions—the cunning schemes—the bright
hopes—the black suspicions—the joy, the agony,
that went on beneath those floating plumes and
sparkling stars—could they be laid open to the

day! What clashing characters mingled in the
whirl! Hark to the young sweet voices! Watch
the actions of each passing incognito. Who are
they? The husband is there watching his wife—
the lover his mistress; jealousy rolls its eyes unseen;
hate lurks beneath a painted smile; the very
air is full of mysteries.

A gay harlequin and one in palmer's weeds met.

“Hist! Speak!”

“The bright stars above us,” murmured one.

“And the hell beneath,” replied the other.

“Right,” said the first, in a secret whisper; “is
he here?”

“By the Virgin! I saw him. But there are two
in the same dress, and it has thrown me off the
track.”

“Whist—look!”

“Can it be?”

“It is.”

“The plume of the right one is touched with
crimson.”

“I will speak with him,” said the palmer.

“In ten minutes meet me by the column where
we parted.”

“Off—he comes!”

They separated.

“Holy Mother!” cried a cavalier, muffled in a
dark mantle, his broad hat looped up with a diamond,
and shaded by a sable plume; “both—both
are here. God! could I mistake?—those two fraternal
fiends! See—see how the same stealthy
pace shows in each—the same quiet, soft, hellish
hate! Now, nerve me, heaven! Palmer's weeds,
and the many-coloured harlequin—I shall not forget;

and both on the blood-track after him. Be
still, deep-fraught breast, thy time is almost come!”

Gliding swiftly after the two first speakers, the
cavalier disappeared.

All eyes were turned upon him as he passed, so
princely was his port. The young knight won
hearts in all directions. Beautiful he must have
been, though the features could not be distinguished
behind the visor bars; his armour glittered in the
almost noontide splendour; the plume floating over
his helm was touched with crimson.

“From the Holy Land, Sir Knight?” asked a
palmer.

“Ay, good pilgrim.”

“And the blood of the infidels on thy plume? I
would, Sir Knight, that they stained with blood wore
all the red token as fairly as thou!”

“Ha!” cried the knight.

The palmer was gone.

A harlequin stood leaning against a column.

“Holy Sir Palmer!”

“Merry fool!”

“Did you rightly guess?”

“When was I ever mistaken? I touched his
master-chord, and it trembled beneath my hand. It
is himself.”

“The red plume?”

“Ay, you cannot be mistaken.”

A glitter from the mask of the harlequin showed
the flash of fiery eyes.

“It is well.”

“Can I aid you?”

“No! alone—alone, I do it! Headless shall
lie that lofty plume ere to-morrow's sun!”

Again they separated.

The graceful and slender cavalier drew his dark
feathers lower over his brow, and while the harlequin
stole through the crowd, followed close on his
track.

Two stately forms swept by in royal robes. The
one, a man of imposing aspect, crowned, and in his
hand a sceptre; the other, a lady, a diadem on her
brow. On the monarch's arm hung a girl unmasked,
and beautiful as morning. The young knight
saw her, and started abruptly with an exclamation
of delight and amazement.

“Fair lady,” he said, after an interval, during
which, with the license of the place, he had regarded
her attentively, “may an honourable knight-errant
lay at your feet his heart, and ever after do
battle in your name?”

“No, Sir Knight,” said Flora, smiling, for it was
she; “seek, I pray you, some other love—some
worthier.”

“No other love,” cried the knight, approaching
with the most guarded respect, and yet with a tenderness,
sincere, deep, and agitated, which did not
escape the notice of her who had called it forth.
“Than Flora Temple, no wortheir breathes the air
of heaven!”

“How!” she replied, surprised and almost alarmed,
“you know me?”

“There is not a page of my heart,” replied the
stranger, “where your name is not written, where
your image is not engraved.”

The lovely girl turned pale and drew back, eying
her companion from head to foot with keen scrutiny,
and then shrunk with something of a tremour close
to her father's arm.

“Nonsense, daughter!” he said; “remember you

are at Rome, and in a masked ball; these things
mean nothing but jest.”

The knight stood erect and silent, as if deaf to
all sounds but the voice of his lady love.

Mrs. Temple, ever childishly delighted with adventure
and admiration, smiled on the proud form
who stood thus glittering in his mailed suit, and who
appeared to have thus publicly selected Flora as
the peculiar object of homage. The attention of
the father and mother was, however, immediately
directed to other attractions; and although the
daughter hung on the arm of the former, she could
receive the remarks of the knight, and even reply
to them, without the danger of observation.

“Your noble father,” said he at length, when he
found another opportunity to address himself to her
ear alone—“your noble sire, fair lady, mistakes.
What I say means more than jest. Do you remember—”

He paused, and resumed again, in a tone yet
lower and deeper,—

“Yes, dear, most beloved Flora! the bosom that
once more, after long and weary years, heaves at
the sound of your voice, has learned nothing from
absence but love, although more hopeless—but adoration,
although offered in despair. Farewell again
—now, perhaps, for ever.”

“Stay—stay!” she cried, pale as monumental
marble, yet uttering not the least exclamation to
render the interesting interview less interrupted by
others.

The knight obeyed.

“Something tells me,” said she, after a short
pause, and with a voice that trembled with emotion,
“that I speak to one whom I have met in a distant
land.”

“To an exile,” added the stranger, “whose years

of agony would be repaid a thousand fold, if but
one kind word from your lips would bless with hope
that deep and faithful love which absence could
never weaken, nor even despair destroy.”

“Mr. Leslie?”

His very heart stood still. Those same eyes
which had haunted him in the remotest climes were
now turned on him with increased loveliness and
feeling. At this moment the cavalier with the sable
plume approached, and said,—

“Ho, Sir Knight—a word with you!”

He to whom this was addressed showed little inclination
to accept an invitation so abruptly given,
and was turning away, disdaining reply, when the
speaker, shading his brows with one hand, half
lifted the mask. Beneath it glanced the eyes of the
Countess D—.

At such periods, years of thought flash over us
in a moment. That remarkable face—he had first
seen it with Howard, and saved her from the mad
steeds. It had floated afterward, darkly, ominously,
in his delirious dreams. Then the haughty coldness
with which it had mingled in the giddy circles
at Florence, and the firmness with which Morton
had identified it at Cascine. The consummate skill
which had guided her through his interviews with
her, so as again to fling suspicion from his mind;
and now, here, beneath a mask, in man's attire, the
same glance—but its coldness changed to fire—its
meaning and its mystery unveiled, gleaming on him
amid the riot and confusion of this magnificent
scene! Even Flora was forgotten.

“Norman Leslie,” she said, after a gaze of singular
agitation, “you are in danger!”

“How? from whom?”

“Your life—you are watched!”

“My life I value not; but, mysterious woman,

you know me—you are then she? By Heaven!”
he grasped her wrist, “you shall not leave me till—”

“For Heaven's sake! I am your friend; stand
aside but for one moment. Seem not to regard me.
Eyes are on us—eyes of hate, fire, and revenge.
More presently.”

She glided away, leaving Norman almost motionless
with astonishment. He turned to Flora—
she also was gone.

“Alms!” said a holy friar, beneath whose cowl
might be detected the head of a profligate young
noble; “alms, I pray you.”

“Stand!” cried a stalwart figure, arrayed as a
robber.

Norman looked around. Nothing could he see
but a wilderness of grotesque forms and masked
faces.

Presently a hand touched his arm.

“Look not around,” said the voice; “I am the
sable plume. If you attempt to gaze, or follow, if
you exhibit any sign to betray to others that I am
addressing you, both of us are lost—Nay, then, I
will fly—you shall never behold me again.”

“Speak, then,” said he.

“Beware the harlequin.”

“The harlequin? There are twenty.”

“Then avoid them all—and the palmer—they
seek thy life.”

“And who are `they?' ”

“The one is the subtle priest, the other—”

There was a pause.

“Nay, he has passed; yet he is almost now
within reach of our lowest voice. The other is—
move not, stir not—”

“Speak!”

“Clairmont.”

It was with difficulty indeed that the advice contained
in this last sentence was adopted. His heart
leaped to his throat. His blood rolled and boiled
in his veins.

“You know the secret of my life?” said he, however,
without stirring.

There was no answer.

“I will turn, if you speak not, and drag you before
this whole multitude.”

There was no answer. He changed his position.

As he suspected, his informant had disappeared.
He sent a keen glance round amid the thousands.
Palmers and harlequins were passing and repassing
in every direction.

“Sir Knight of the Crimson Plume,” said a voice.

“Well, my fair page?”

“Beneath the vase, on yon pedestal, lies a scroll.
It is for you; but read it not till you are alone.”

Bewildered, half believing himself in a romantic
dream, he made his way to the spot designated, and
with a cautious hand moved the small vase. Passing
his fingers over the marble, he seized a strip of
paper.

Trembling with curiosity, hoping that he was
about to make the discovery which would lift him
at once to bliss unutterable, he forgot the caution
he had so singularly received respecting the harlequin;
and, after wrapping around him a heavy black
mantle which he had left in the corridor, without
waiting for his carriage, he hastened—he almost
flew into the street.

The moon was just emerging from a silver cloud
that lay like a bar along the sky. Its light fell
broadly down from the eaves of an immense palace.

Pausing in a narrow lane, he held up the scroll. It
contained only a line:—“By twilight, meet me tomorrow
night, at St. Peter's, before the altar of St.
Leo the Great. Your life, more than your life, depends
on it.”

A short, deep exclamation at his side startled
him; and the glimmer of a bright blade trembled
in the moonbeam.

“Ha!—at last!” cried a well-known voice, as a
dagger was lifted over his breast.

Off his guard, unarmed, utterly exposed, death
once again gleamed before him, from which all his
personal strength and courage would have been unable
to defend him, when a figure darted upon them
and threw a heavy cloak upon the arm of the assassin.
Grasping him, thus entangled, Norman brought
him to the ground, and tore off his mask. The
face of Clairmont met his eyes. It was black with
passion. He wrenched the knife from his hand.
A dreadful feeling flashed across him, but muttering,
“No—no blood!” he flung the blade fiercely
away. “Dog! assassin! you shall come with me!”

A crowd of revellers burst suddenly round the
corner. Several rushed to the spot. Norman stood
alone. His victim, with a sudden and desperate
struggle, had wrenched himself away, leaving only
a few shreds, of various colours, in the hand of his
foe.