He came slowly onward, with his head downcast, neither looking to the one side nor to the other. He ascended the steps of stone, and in a moment was lost to the view of the loiterers in the castle yard.
The hall of the castle passed, a passage traversed, and another stairway ascended, the stooping scholar stood in a small ante-chamber, with the light of the noon-day sun subdued to a twilight obscurity by the absence of windows from the place, while an evening gloom hung around the narrow walls, the arching ceiling of darkened stone, and the floor of tesselated marble. A single casement, long and narrow, reaching from floor to arch, gave entrance to a straggling beam of daylight, disclosing the stout and muscular form of a man-at-arms, with armor and helmet of steel, who, pike in hand, waited beside a massive door, opening into one of the principal apartments of the castle.
With a soft, gliding footstep, the Signor Aldarin glided along the tesselated floor, and stood beside the man-at-arms, ere he was aware of his approach.
“Ha! Balvardo, thou keepest strict watch beside the sick chamber of my lord.” The words broke from the Signor Aldarin. “Hast obeyed my behest?”
“E’en so, my lord,” the sentinel began, in a rough, surly tone.
“How, vassal! Dost name me with the title of my brother? Have a care, good Balvardo, have a care!”
“He chides me in a rough voice,” murmured the sentinel, as though speaking to his own ear; “and yet a wild light flashes over his features at the word. Signor, I but mistook the word--a slip o’ th’ tongue,” he exclaimed aloud. “Thy behests have been obeyed. No one has been suffered to pass into the chamber of my Lord Di Albarone since morning dawn, save the fair Ladye Annabel, who waits beside the couch of the wounded knight.”
“Come hither, Balvardo. Look from this narrow window: mark you well the dial-plate in the castle yard. In a few moments the shadow will sweep across the path of high noon. When high noon and the shadow meet, thy charge is over. The soothing potion which I gave my brother at daybreak, will have taken its proper effect. Until that moment, keep strict watch: let not a soul enter the Red Chamber on the peril of thy life!”
And with the command, the Signor swept from the ante-chamber, gliding along a corridor opposite the one from which he had just emerged, and his low footsteps in a moment had ceased to echo along the dark old arches.