"You have been weeping," began the Princess; "'tis in vain that you try to put a good face on it." "I have not been weeping!" returned Margaret, keeping her countenance with wonderful self-control. "Well, well; I'm glad you conceal it. That shows you love him; and if ever there was a time when your husband needed your love, your watchfulness, and your protection, it is now." "Your words alarm me! You have something extraordinary to tell me!" "My coming here at all must have been enough to have alarmed you. You may well suppose that I would not come to your castle for nothing. We have both equal cause to fear a certain person, and if we do not quickly come to an understanding, one of us may lose what she prizes most in the world." "Speak! oh, speak!" cried Dame Banfi, trembling, and making her sister sit down beside her on the sofa. "Our husbands have hated each other from the first. They were always of different opinions, belonged to opposite parties, and early became accustomed to regard each other as foes. Woe betide us if this hatred should turn to open strife, and we should see our loved ones compass each other's ruin." "Oh, I can positively assure you that Banfi nourishes no hostile feeling against your husband." "I do not apprehend Apafi's fall, but your husband's. The throne upon which he was placed by force has quite changed Apafi's character. I perceive, to my consternation, that he has begun to grow jealous of his authority. Why, even at Érsekújvár, when he first became Prince, he expressed his anxiety to the Grand Vizier that Gabriel Haller was plotting for the diadem, whereupon the Grand Vizier had poor Haller beheaded there and then without my husband's knowledge; but Apafi still recollects the message your husband sent him on that occasion, namely, that ere long he would tear from his shoulders the green velvet mantle, the symbol of the princely dignity." "Oh, my God! what must I not fear?" "Nothing, so long as I do not lose my husband's favour. While you are securely sleeping, I am watchfully guarding against his passionate outbursts, and hitherto God has given me strength to fight against the monsters who would make of his reign a bloody memorial. But there is a certain condition of mind to which my husband is liable when my influence over him loses all its talismanic power; when, revolting against his own nature, his gentleness turns to ravening savagery; when his eyes, usually so ready to weep at the death of his lowliest vassal, seem to thirst for blood; when he throws off his habitual circumspectness and becomes wildly reckless. And this condition--I blush to confess it--is drunkenness. I do not bring it against him as an accusation. He whom we love has no fault in our eyes." "Except one thing--his infidelity to us," interrupted Margaret. "That too, yes, that too must be forgiven when it becomes a question of saving his life," replied the Princess.