indeterminate as yet, had just awoke in the old man's mind: Dario's face
seemed to him to be ashen, to wear that mask of terrified anguish which
he had already remarked on the countenance of his dearest friend,
Monsignor Gallo, when he had held him in his arms, in like manner, two
hours before his death. There was also the same swoon and the same
sensation of clasping a cold form whose heart ceases to beat. And above
everything else there was in Boccanera's mind the same growing thought of
poison, poison coming one knew not whence or how, but mysteriously
striking down those around him with the suddenness of lightning. And for
a long time he remained with his head bent over the face of his nephew,
that last scion of his race, seeking, studying, and recognising the signs
of the mysterious, implacable disorder which once already had rent his
heart atwain.

But Benedetta addressed him in a low, entreating voice: "You will tire
yourself, uncle. Let me take him a little, I beg you. Have no fear, I'll
hold him very gently, he will feel that it is I, and perhaps that will
rouse him."

At last the Cardinal raised his head and looked at her, and allowed her
to take his place after kissing her with distracted passion, his eyes the
while full of tears--a sudden burst of emotion in which his great love
for the young woman melted the stern frigidity which he usually affected.
"Ah! my poor child, my poor child!" he stammered, trembling from head to
foot like an oak-tree about to fall. Immediately afterwards, however, he
mastered himself, and whilst Pierre and Don Vigilio, mute and motionless,
regretted that they could be of no help, he walked slowly to and fro.
Soon, moreover, that bed-chamber became too small for all the thoughts
revolving in his mind, and he strayed first into the dressing-room and
then down the passage as far as the dining-room. And again and again he