She clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared from behind the curtains. "For once Fate is my friend," she turned with flashing eyes to the Circassian. "Before his departure to the shrines of the Archangel, Alberic has appointed this nameless stranger captain of Castel San Angelo. Go--find him and bring him to me! Now we shall see," she added, "if all this beauty of mine shall prevail against his manhood. Your eyes express doubt, my sweet Persephoné?" Theodora had raised herself to her full height. She looked regal indeed--a wonderful apparition. What man lived there to resist such loveliness of face and form? Persephoné, too, seemed to feel the woman's magic, for her tone was less confident when she replied: "Such beauty as the Lady Theodora's surely the world has never seen." "I shall conquer--by dread Hekaté," Theodora flashed, flushed by Persephoné's unwitting tribute. "He shall open for me the portals of the Emperor's Tomb, he shall sue at my feet for my love--and obtain his guerdon. Not a word of this to anyone, my Persephoné--least of all, the Lord Basil. Bring the stranger to me by the postern--" "But--if he refuse?" There was something in Persephoné's tone that stung Theodora's soul to the quick. "He will not refuse." Persephoné bowed and departed, and for some time Theodora's dark inscrutable eyes brooded on the equally inscrutable face of the goddess of the Underworld, which was just then touched by a fugitive beam of sunlight and seemed to nod mysteriously. CHAPTER X A SPIRIT PAGEANT When, on the day succeeding his appointment Tristan returned to the Inn of the Golden Shield he felt as one in a trance. Like a puppet of Fate he had been plunged into the seething maelstrom of feudal Rome. He hardly realized the import of the scene in which he had played so prominent a part. He had acted upon impulse, hardly knowing what it was all about. Dimly at intervals it flashed through his consciousness, dimly he remembered facing two youths, the one the Senator of Rome--the other the High Priest of Christendom, even though a prisoner in the Lateran. Vaguely he recalled the words that had been spoken between them, vaguely he recalled the fact that the Senator of Rome had commended him for having saved the city, offering him appointment, holding out honor and preferment, if he would enter his service. Vaguely he remembered bending his knee before the proud son of Marozia and accepting his good offices. In the guest-chamber Tristan found pilgrims from every land assembled round the tables discoursing upon the wonders and perils hidden in the strange and shifting corridors of Rome. Not a few had witnessed the scene in which he had so conspicuously figured and, upon recognizing him, regarded him with shy glances, while commenting upon the prevailing state of unrest, the periodical seditions and outbreaks of the Romans.