The council had assembled at the Amedi palace. In a spacious apartment a crowd of men sat together. There were dark frowns upon their countenances, and, at intervals, angry exclamations escaped from their lips, as the cause of their convocation was dwelt upon with malignant emphasis and vehement declamation by Jacopa Amedi.

“What,” he asked, after having recapitulated the facts, “should be the fate of him, who, casting aside the honor of knighthood and manhood, violates his plighted word, showers disgraceful contumely upon our house, and offers deadliest insult to Amedi’s daughter?”

“Death!” replied a solitary voice, as the door of the apartment opened, and a stranger stood at the threshold.

The eyes of all were turned with wonder in the direction from which the voice proceeded. No one present appeared to know the stranger.

The intruder gazed around unrebuked by the inquiring looks that were bent upon him, and as his eye met the speaker’s, he repeated the ominous word which had startled the assembled group.

He was a youth of fine appearance; slight in form, but of a lofty bearing, with a handsome countenance, and full, large, searching, dark eyes. His dress was of sable velvet. Upon his head he wore a cap, surmounted with two black plumes, and at his side there hung a sombre-cased rapier, the hilt of which glittered with diamonds.

“Death!” he repeated, as he glanced deliberately from one individual to another, “death should be the doom of him who, traitorous to love and false to honor, pays back the affection of a betrothed wife with withering scorn, and upon the dignity of a noble house tramples with profane and sacrilegious tread!”

Jacopa Amedi advanced from the position he had occupied, and confronted the new comer.

“Whoe’er thou art, sir stranger,” he said, “thou hast mistaken the place for thy reception. This is a meeting only of the relatives of our house—thou canst not claim kindred with the Amedi.”

“I am,” the youth replied, “of noble birth—a Ghibelline—a friend to thy family and cause, and an enemy—a deadly enemy—to Buondlemonte and the Donati. Thy wrongs are the wrongs of all who hate the Guelphs, and affect every noble in the land. Me they have united to thee by an indissoluble bond, and I proclaim again that death—death unannounced—should be the fate launched at the treacherous Buondlemonte!”

There was a wild energy in the stranger’s voice, and as he spoke, his dark eyes gleamed with demoniacal fire.

“For thy noble sympathy thou art entitled to our thanks, and hast them,” Jacopa Amedi observed, in reply; “but still we must entreat thy absence; a stranger may not be admitted to our counsels.”

“Not though he tenders thy honor as dearly as though he were himself an Amedi?” the young man asked hurriedly.

Jacopa bowed a negative.

“My name may change thy thought,” the youth remarked, as he approached Jacopa, and, as the latter inclined his ear, whispered a single sentence to him.

Jacopa Amedi started back in amazement, and gazed for a moment as if he had been paralyzed.

“Thou! thou!” he exclaimed, as a grim smile settled upon his features.

The stranger placed his gloved finger upon his lip to advise caution; and Jacopa, warned by the signal, restrained the expressions to which he had been about to give utterance.

“This,” he said, as he took the other’s hand and led him forward, while a gloomy frown supplanted the smile upon his own countenance, “this is as it should be; there is nobility enough in the act to make thee a worthy partaker in our deliberations.”

Saying this, he made a place for him among the rest, and vouched to the company for his right to be present.

The consultation was continued, but Jacopa Amedi ceased to take the lead in it. The stranger, as if by magic, exerted a controlless influence over every one. He spoke, and all listened with breathless attention to his lava-like words. He proposed and his suggestions were adopted without a dissenting voice. He named himself the leader of an enterprise in contemplation, and he was selected by acclamation.

“Who,” he asked, after an hour had been spent in consultation, “is informed of the period when this faithless lord leads his dainty bride to the altar?”

“I have taken care to learn that,” Baptista Amedi replied. “An hour after vespers the priest pronounces the marriage sacrament in the chapel of the palace.”

“Then at vespers,” the stranger said, as he rose from his place, “meet me here again, prepared as we have agreed; till then let us teach ourselves discretion.”

——