"But not unavenged," she murmured, and her usual silvery voice was husky. "If wrong is meted out to thee,—if this love, so like that of the angels, is made the harbinger of a curse,—if these hopes are blasted, this brain seared, and the aspirations of this heart blotted out forever,—let each and all who are concerned look well to their souls; for, by the soul of a sainted mother in heaven, terrible shall be the atonement of him who thus wrongs Lucretia Borgia!"
"Hush, hush, girl!" said a voice close to her side. Mad Seta had returned, and entered noiselessly, and now stood beside her. "It is not well for thee to talk of vengeance on such men; they are too powerful!"
"Were they gods, and do this wrong, heaven itself could not shield them! As long as there are brains to plot and hands to execute, let no one cross my path and blight my hopes!"
"But they will do it. I know it; I read it in the stars, long years ago; and still I nightly read it, when the sky is not palled with clouds. They will scatter death and desolation around them, and make thy life a curse, as they have done to others."
"You speak wildly to-night, good Seta."
"Wildly? Ha, ha! Have I not had a cause for speaking so? I 've seen such sights as few have seen, and live to weave their horrors in forms of speech. I saw thy mother, child, the night before she died. I knew her veins were full of poison—that she was doomed; and well I knew—but thou shalt not know it. The tale is not for ears like thine. I 'll go and breathe it to the air, or howl it to the fiends! Ha, ha! 't is not for such as thee—not for such as thee!"
