Blake heard Margherita's breath release itself. She was staring as if
at an apparition. His mind, working with feverish speed, sought vainly
to grasp the situation. Maruffi had broken away and come for his
vengeance, but how or why this had been made possible he could not
conceive. It sufficed that the man was here in the flesh, sinister,
terrible, malignant as hell. Blake knew that the ultimate test of his
courage had come.
He felt the beginnings of that same shuddering, sickening weakness with
which he was only too familiar; felt the strength running out from his
body as water escapes from a broken vessel. He froze with the sense of
his physical impotency, and yet despite this chaos of conflicting
emotions his inner mind was clear; it was bitter, too, with a ferocious
self-disgust.
There was a breathless pause before Maruffi spoke.
"Lucrezia Ferara!" he said, hoarsely, as if wishing to test the sound
of the name. "So Oliveta is the daughter of the overseer, and you are
Savigno's sweetheart." His words were directed at Margherita, who
answered in a thin, shrill, broken voice:
"What--are you doing--here?"
"I came for that wanton's blood. Give her to me."
"Oliveta? She is--gone."