the kindness he could assume. "I desire a few moments' conversation with you."
"Proceed—I listen dutifully."
"Allow me, as a first question, to ask if you love a young nobleman, who has sometimes visited the palace, and is known as Mercado?"
"I cannot inform you that I do," was the hesitatingly uttered reply.
"I am glad of that—very glad; for he is doomed to die. I have his death-warrant."
Donna Lucretia started up and stood before her father, pale as death, and quivering in every limb.
"What do I hear?" she shrieked. "Mercado doomed to death! The death-warrant of my lover! O, what means this horrid revelation?"
"Ah, he is your lover, then?" asked Alexander Borgia, with an involuntary expression of irony in his voice.
Since it has come to this, I swear it! Mercado is my lover; I am his betrothed!"
"Your frankness wins my approbation; it does, indeed!"
"No jeering, sir, unless you forget that I, too, am a Borgia!" and her dark eyes flashed fearfully upon him as she spoke. "If my lover is under sentence of death, show me a way to save him, or I will kneel and curse you! O, do it!—do it, if you love earth, or fear the pangs of hell!"
"Peace, peace, my daughter! It is true that I have a warrant for Mercado's death; but the difficulty may not be so great as you imagine. I think I can point out a way by which you can save him. Now that he is in
