Theodora stood immobile, with blazing eyes and terrible face, then she clapped her hands twice and at the sound two eunuchs appeared and stood motionless awaiting their mistress' behest. For apace there was silence, while Theodora glanced from the one to the other, quivering from head to foot with the violence of the passion that possessed her, casting anon a glance at Tristan who stood silent, with bowed head. At length she glided up to him and, as she laid her two white hands on his broad shoulders, Tristan shuddered and felt a longing to make an end of all her evil beauty and devilish cunning. Then, deliberately, she took the scarf of blue samite, which lay beside her and put her foot upon it. "This is very precious to you, Tristan, is it not?" she said in her sweet voice, while her witching eyes sank into his. "I was about to tell you how you might serve me, and deserve all the happiness that is in store for you when I was interrupted by the appearance of this woman. Can you tell me, who she is, and why she is regarding you so strangely?" As she spoke she turned slowly towards Hellayne whose face was pale as death. A spasm of rage shook Tristan, at the sight of the woman who regarded him out of wide, pitiful eyes, but even as he longed to pierce the heart of her who was striving to wreck all he held dear, Odo of Cluny's warning seemed to clear his brain of the rage and hate that was clouding it, and in that instant he knew, if he played his part, he held in his hand the last throw in the dread game, of which Rome was the pawn. "In all things will I do your bidding, Lady Theodora,--for who can withstand your beauty and your enchantment?" said a voice that seemed not part of himself. Theodora turned to Hellayne. "You have heard the words the Lord Tristan has spoken," she said in veiled tone of mockery. "Tell me now, did you not know that I was engaged upon matters of state when you intruded yourself into our presence?" For a moment the blue eyes of Hellayne flashed swords with the dark orbs of Theodora. There was a silence and the two women read each other's inmost thoughts, Hellayne meeting Theodora's contemptuous scorn with the keen look of one who has seen her peril and has nerved herself to meet it. To Tristan she did not even vouchsafe a glance. "I followed one, perjured and forsworn," she said in tones that cut Tristan's very soul, while a look of immeasurable contempt flashed from her blue eyes. "You are welcome to him, Lady Theodora. I do not even envy you his memory." Ere Theodora could reply, Hellayne, with a choking sob, turned and fled down the moonlit path like some hunted thing, and ere either realized what had happened she had vanished in the night.