Produced by Sjaani, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: "HER EYES TURNED TOWARDS IT MECHANICALLY BECAUSE IT CONTAINED ... THE MAN OF WHOM SHE WAS THINKING"] PRISONERS FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON By MARY CHOLMONDELEY _Author of_ "Red Pottage" "But for failing of love on our part, therefore is all our travail." --JULIAN OF NORWICH. DODD, MEAD & COMPANY NEW YORK MCMVI Copyright, 1905, 1906, by COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY Copyright, 1906, by MARY CHOLMONDELEY _Published, September, 1906_ To My Brother Reginald ILLUSTRATIONS "Her eyes turned towards it mechanically because it contained ... the man of whom she was thinking" _Frontispiece_ "A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_ words" _Page_ 36 "'Is she worth it?' he said with sudden passion" " 46 "'You are all blinder one than the other, that it's Andrea I'm grieving for'" " 80 "If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake" " 146 "Fay noticed for the first time how lightly Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders were" " 184 CHAPTER I Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you, And fairies brought their offerings at your birth; You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due, Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth. --ARTHUR C. LEGGE. Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome. How small it looked, what a huddled speck with a bubble dome, to be represented by so stupendous a name! She gazed at it without seeing it. Her eyes turned towards it mechanically because it contained somewhere within its narrow precincts the man of whom she was thinking, of whom she was always thinking. It was easy to see that Fay--the Duchess of Colle Alto--was an Englishwoman, in spite of her historic Italian name.