Читать книгу Fabiola; Or, The Church of the Catacombs онлайн

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Pale, sick, and staggering, he went into his chamber, repulsing roughly the officious advances of his slaves; and only beckoned to his faithful domestic to follow him, and then signed to him to bar the door. A lamp was burning brightly by the table, on which Fulvius threw the embroidered scarf in silence, and pointed to the stains of blood. That dark man said nothing; but his swarthy countenance was blanched, while his master’s was ashy and livid.

“It is the same, no doubt,” at length spoke the attendant in their foreign tongue; “but she is certainly dead.”

“Art thou quite sure, Eurotas?” asked the master, with the keenest of his hawk’s looks.

“As sure as man can be of what he has not seen himself. Where didst thou find this? And whence this blood?”

“I will tell thee all to-morrow; I am too sick to-night. As to those stains, which were liquid when I found it, I know not whence they came, unless they are warnings of vengeance—nay, a vengeance themselves, deep as the Furies could meditate, fierce as they could launch. That blood has not been shed now.”