leaned against the wall, and glared wildly through the socket.
"What! do you hesitate? Then I will ring again; your lover dies!" And again he jerked the bell-cord!
"Stay—stay! I will promise—I will!"
"Swear it," said Borgia, fiercely, with his hand upon the cord. "Swear to be wholly mine at an early day, or I ring for the third and last time."
"By my mother's soul, I swear it!" came, in a low whisper, from the ashy-pale lips of Donna Lucretia, and she sank backwards into his arms, in a fainting-fit.
And as the dark eyes of Alexander Borgia roved over that insensible, but strangely, wildly beautiful form, a laugh of exultation escaped him, and he cried, with the joy of a fiend rejoicing over a damned soul,
"Ha, ha! she 's mine,—mine forever, body and soul!"
