Lycabetta frowned.

"What amazes you?"

Lysidice crept nearer to her mistress and whispered, "Though he says he is the King, though he commands kingly, he is wrapped in his mantle so closely that I could not see his face."

Lycabetta laughed derisively.

"Is that all? What of that? When great folk come to these gardens they sometimes ape invisibility."

Lysidice ventured a little closer to Lycabetta. Her tale was not all told.

"Ay," she said; "but the night wind fluttered his cloak a little and I saw something of his habit. It was more like the livery of a fool than the apparel of a king."

Lycabetta's dark eyebrows lowered a little; her red lips tightened.

"Indeed! Does he send his fool for an ambassador after keeping me close through the long dark? Well, bring him in. We shall see."

Lysidice saluted and passed from her presence. Lycabetta seated herself on her couch thoughtfully. She was not in her gentlest temper, for she was vexed at her failure to snare Perpetua, and she was restless after denying her door to so many friends for a king who did not come, and now perhaps sent his fool on love-errands. The King was the King; there was no one like the King; but was there a woman in Syracuse like herself, or worth her favors? Mentally she reviewed her rivals with a crafty eye; the pretty court peahens, her own skilled minions, none could please the King so well. As for Perpetua, the King's hot love and hot hate for the mountain maid earned only her contempt. The girl might prove enticing by-and-by, to a green palate, when she was pliant, but now she was rough country fare.

Her reverie was interrupted by the return of Lysidice, followed by a man so muffled in a rough cloak that he was impossible to divine. It might hide a king; it might hide a beggar; it covered both. Whoever he was, the man stood still within a few feet of Lycabetta. His eyes were watching her over his lifted arm, which draped the cloak about his body, but some of the stuff was wound so cowllike about his head that she could discover nothing of his face. Lysidice lingered, curiosity conquering her duty to depart, and Lycabetta did not heed her; she heeded only the silent, motionless man.

"Well?" she interrogated, sharply, as the man made no sign. At her word he cast his wrapping from him, and Lycabetta beheld with some irritation the twisted form and writhen features of the fool Diogenes. Lysidice crept round to the other side of her mistress and whispered to her:

"It is the fool."

Robert moved a little nearer to Lycabetta, with strange fear and strange hope in his heart. Through all the horrors and denials of the night, through all his consciousness of a conspiracy he could neither fathom nor baffle, his distraught mind carried some memory of Perpetua, and that memory had steered him to the gate of Lycabetta's garden of delight. At those gates he found no obstacle; his word was taken without question; no unbridled hand sought to draw the mantle from his face; unchallenged, untroubled, he had made his way through the sweet-smelling lawns and arbors to Lycabetta's door. Perhaps she was not in the conspiracy; perhaps she was loyal. These thoughts were racing through his mind as he stood before her and cast the mantle from him; these thoughts forced him towards her, forced him, with lips parted eagerly, pitifully, like the lips of a thirst-goaded man, to speak.

"Do you know me?" he gasped, hoarsely, and his voice sounded strange and unfamiliar in his ears, like the voice of a lost spirit.

Lycabetta smiled a little as she stretched herself carelessly on the couch.

"Surely I know you," she answered, and at her words the warm blood seemed to well back into Robert's heart, and he lifted up his hands in a rapture.

"Heaven," he cried, "I thank you that all the world has not gone mad."

He mouthed the world's madness so bitterly that Lycabetta propped herself on an elbow and eyed him curiously. She disliked Diogenes less than the courtier-creatures did, for she had less chance to counter his scathing phrases, and, besides, he was near the King, and it is ever well to be friends with kings' neighbors.

"You seem angry," she said.

Robert answered her almost in a yell.

"Angry! The rage of hell raves in me. The night is full of voices, but I will not hear them. The night is thick with terrors, but I will not fear them."

He was pacing up and down the room now, striking his hands together, trampling upon the rich furs that strewed the floor, as if they were his enemies grovelling at his feet, so possessed with the hysterical passion that he seemed to have forgotten the women who watched him and wondered.

Lysidice whispered in a low voice to Lycabetta, "He has gone mad."

Lycabetta nodded, tacitly agreeing. If the fool were mad, as in very deed he seemed to be, she wished him well out of her borders. Madness was one of the ugly things of life for which she had no pity; madness was one of the dangerous things of life, and of all dangers she was greatly afraid. The fool carried a dagger at his girdle, and it were well to pacify him. She could send for the Moorish slaves to cast him forth, but if he were indeed sent by the King, any ill-treatment of his messenger might offend Robert, and the anger of offended Robert might take uglier shapes than the fool's dagger. So she watched the figure uneasily. Suddenly he stopped in his pacing and turned to her.

"There is the strangest treason abroad in Sicily," he cried. "My creatures defy me; my friends deny me. They have set a sham king on my seat; they bow to a crowned pretender; they shall die to-morrow."

Lysidice whispered again to Lycabetta, "He thinks he is the King."

Lycabetta nodded. She had heard how the fool Diogenes had parodied the King's manner and earned the King's anger. She knew no more than this, and it seemed strange that the King's rage should have frightened the knave into madness. But he seemed, indeed, insane as he raged up and down the room.

"Give me a sword!" he shouted. "Syracuse will stand by me. We will crush this treason bloodily. Give me a sword! give me a sword!"

In that palace of pleasure there were no weapons of death, yet Robert ranged the room wildly as if dreaming that some soldier's friend might lurk behind silken curtains. Lycabetta turned to her comrade and whispered to her behind her hand:

"The poor ape is moon-crazed--clean out of his wits. He mimicked the King yesterday, and now the trick grows on him."

The sound of her voice seemed to arrest Robert in his search for a sword, for he turned and eyed them suspiciously.

"Do not anger him," Lysidice entreated, catching in her fear at her mistress's hand. Robert moved towards the women, frowning.

"Why are you whispering?" he asked, savagely. Lysidice shivered, but Lycabetta was less fearful. Serene in her beauty, she was confident of her power to flatter the fool according to his folly, and she gave him a deep salutation, mockingly reverential.

"We did but admire the thunder of authority, the lightning of royalty,"

she said; and then, thinking she had done enough to placate his passion, she turned to whisper to Lysidice, "Let us tickle this fool like a cracked lute."

Instantly Robert's rage blazed higher. His bemused senses snuffed treason everywhere. What might these two light women be plotting.

"If you whisper again," he shrieked at them, "I will have you whipped; I will have you crucified. Are you stained with treason?"

There was that in his voice which startled Lycabetta from her indifference. Again she mimed servility.

"Have I offended your Majesty?" she sighed. "I pray your royal pardon. I was but planning with this minion here some way to freshen your spirits.

See, I do you obeisance."

She served him a sweeping salutation, in which her lithe body seemed to swoon at his feet in complete surrender. Then, straightening, she swerved and called to her women:

"Girls, girls, girls--Glycerium, Euphrosyne, Hypsipyle--all of you come hither."

Obedient to her voice, the girls came trooping in, from garden and gallery, fluttering like doves, murmuring like doves. Lycabetta held up her hand and they halted, wonder in their lovely eyes to see the priestess of Venus giving audience to the loathly fool.

"Dainties," Lycabetta cried, "his Majesty honors us with his presence to-night."

And as she spoke she pointed with extended arm to the deformed, dishonored man. Glycerium alone voiced the surprise of her fellows.

"His Majesty!" she repeated.

Lycabetta swooped in among her women, laughing and whispering, catching now one and now another of her pretty minions by the hand, as if seeking to choose the fairest.

"He is crack-brained, and calls himself the King," she murmured. "Let him believe it for our sport." Then she called aloud, gulling the suspicious visitor, "Do homage to the King, damsels, and perhaps he may fling his favor to the one of you that dances the most alluringly."

Instantly the girls made a rush towards Robert, a wave of flowing hair, of laughing faces, of fluttering, transparent dresses, a wave that rippled close to him and then receded as the women swayed wantonly into postures of impudent supplication.

"Long live the King!" piped Glycerium; and "God save the King!" altered Euphrosyne; and the others, catching up the cries, repeated them, a babble of merry blessings, while Lycabetta crowned the clamor with the cry of, "Hail to the Lily of Sicily!"