Gently and reverently I lifted her in my arms, an intoxication of holy joy pervading me, and the prayers falling faster from my lips than ever they had done since as a lad I had recited them at my mother’s knee. A moment I laid her on the bench, whilst I divested myself of my cloak. Then suddenly I paused, and stood listening, holding my breath. Steps were advancing towards the door. My first impulse was to rush forward and call to those who came, shouting my news and imploring their help. Then a sudden, an almost instinctive suspicion caught and chilled me. Who was it came at such an hour? What could any man seek in the Church of San Domenico at dead of night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but passers-by? That last question went not long unanswered. The steps came nearer, whilst I stood appalled, my skin roughening like a dog’s. They halted at the door. Something heavy hurtled against it. A voice, the voice of Ramiro del’ Orca—I knew it upon the instant—reached my ears which concentration had rendered superacute. “It is locked, Baldassare. Get out those tools of yours and force it.” My wits were working now at fever-pace. It may be that I am swift of thought beyond the ordinary man, or it may be that what then came to me was either a flash of inspiration or the conclusion to which I leapt by instinct. But in that moment the whole plot of Madonna’s poisoning was revealed to me. Poisoned she had been—aye, but by some drug that did but produce for a little while the outward appearance of death so truly simulated as to deceive the most experienced of doctors. I had heard of such poisons, and here, in very truth, was one of them at work. His vengeance on her for her indifference to his suit was not so clumsy and primitive as that of simply slaying her. He had, by his infernal artifice, intended, secretly, to bear her off. To-morrow when men found a broken church-door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege down to some wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices of magic. I cursed myself in that hour that I had not earlier been moved to peer into her coffin whilst yet there might have been time to have saved her. Now? The sweat stood out in beads upon my brow. At that door there were, to judge by the sound of footsteps and of voices, some three or four men besides Messer Ramiro. For only weapon I had my dagger. What could I do with that to defend her? Ramiro’s plan would suffer no frustration through my discovery; when to-morrow the sacrilege was discovered the cold body of Lazzaro Biancomonte lying beside the desecrated bier would be but an item in the work of profanation they would find—an item that nowise would modify the conclusion to which I anticipated they would come. CHAPTER XIV. REQUIESCAT!