The room literally swarmed with the followers of the ravisher, masked, mailed, armed to the teeth.
Isabel was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons; her shriek smote the ear of Zicci.

He sprang forward, and Isabel heard his wild cry in a foreign tongue,--the gleam, the clash of swords.

She lost her senses; and when she recovered, she found herself gagged, and in a carriage that was driven rapidly, by the side of a masked and motionless figure.

The carriage stopped at the portals of a gloomy mansion.
The gates opened noiselessly, a broad flight of steps, brilliantly illumined, was before her,--she was in the palace of the Prince di--..