"That I may perchance, when you have told me the truth--the whole truth!" "Ask, my lord, and I will answer," Tristan replied. "Where is the Lady Hellayne?"-- The questioning voice growled like far off thunder. Tristan recoiled a step, staring into the questioner's face as if he thought he had gone mad. "The Lady Hellayne?" he stammered, white to the lips and with a dull sinking of the heart. "How am I to know? I have not seen her since I left Avalon--months ago. Is she not with you?" The Lord Laval's brow was dark as a thunder cloud. "If she were with me--would I be wasting my time asking you concerning her?" he barked. "Where is she, then?" Tristan gasped. "That you shall tell me--or I have forgotten the use of this knife!" And he laid his hand on the hilt of a long dagger that protruded from his belt. Tristan's eyes met those of the other. "My lord, this is unworthy of you! I have never committed a deed I dared not confess--and I despise your threat and your accusation as would the Lady Hellayne, were she here." Steps were heard approaching from the direction of the pavilion. "I am a stranger in Rome. Doubtless you are familiar with its ways. Some one is coming. Where shall we meet?" Tristan pondered. "At the Arch of the Seven Candles. Every child can point the way. When shall it be?" "To-morrow,--at the second hour of the night. And take care to speak the truth!" Ere Tristan could reply the speaker had vanished among the thickets. For a moment he paused, amazed, bewildered. Roger de Laval in Rome! And Hellayne--where was she? She had left Avalon--had left her consort. Had she entered a convent? Hellayne--where was Hellayne? Before this dreadful uncertainty all the events of the night vanished as if they had never been. For a long time Tristan remained where Roger de Laval had left him. The cool air from the lake blew refreshingly on his heated brow. A thousand odors from orange and jessamine floated caressingly about him. The night was very still. There, in the soft sky-gloom, moved the majestic procession of undiscovered worlds. There, low on the horizon, the yellow moon swooned languidly down in a bed of fleecy clouds. The drowsy chirp of a dreaming bird came softly now and again from branch shadowed thickets, and the lilies on the surface of the lake nodded mysteriously to each other, as if they were whispering a secret of another world. At last the moon sank out of sight and from afar, softened by the distance, the chimes of convent bells from the remote regions of the Aventine were wafted through the flower scented summer night. END OF BOOK THE SECOND BOOK THE THIRD CHAPTER I WOLFSBANE The early summer dawn was creeping over the silent Campagna when Tristan reached the Inn of The Golden Shield. As one dazed he had traversed the deserted, echoing streets in the mysterious half-light which flooded the Eternal City; a light in which everything was sharply defined yet seemed oddly spectral and ghostlike.