He had, by his infernal artifice, intended, secretly, to bear her off.

To-morrow when men found a broken church-door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege down to some wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices of magic.
I cursed myself in that hour that I had not earlier been moved to peer into her coffin whilst yet there might have been time to have saved her.
Now?
The sweat stood out in beads upon my brow.

At that door there were, to judge by the sound of footsteps and of voices, some three or four men besides Messer Ramiro.

For only weapon I had my dagger.

What could I do with that to defend her?
Ramiro's plan would suffer no frustration through my discovery; when to-morrow the sacrilege was discovered the cold body of Lazzaro Biancomonte lying beside the desecrated bier would be but an item in the work of profanation they would find--an item that nowise would modify the conclusion to which I anticipated they would come..