an empress who to him alone out of all the earth was a slave, an enchanted wand with which he summoned what he would, an idol that he treated as hunters treated their statue of Pan when they reviled him because they needed more wealth than he gave, and yet feared him with a strange mingling of dread, of reverence, and of jealous love.
"Villaflor?" he repeated hoarsely. "That Satan of the Church? Better she had gone at once to her death. Are you sure? How can you know?"
Vane had let slip in a momentary incaution the name of his great priestly confederate; he veiled the indiscretion with his finest tact.
"How can I doubt?" he said, with an acrid impatience that passed well enough for aversion to a mutual and omnipotent foe. "Was Giulio Villaflor ever absent from such errands as those? Did his brain ever fail to hatch such plots as those by which the maskers of Antina were entrapped, however little his hand might be seen, or his will be guessed in them? His special hatred always bore down on the Countess Vassalis; there is no more doubt that he works beneath this, if he do not wholly originate and govern it, than there is doubt that the sun is shining out yonder."
