I don't think I ever did fear it till you made my life so sweet.

But life is not worth an unkindness or injustice.

Better die trusting to the last than live in the misery and shame of suspecting one I love, or dreading treacherous malice from any hand under my own roof." When I met Davilo the next morning, the grave and anxious expression of his face--usually calm and serene even in deepest thought, as are those of the experienced members of an Order confident in the consciousness of irresistible secret power--not a little disturbed me.
As Eveena had said, the thunder-cloud was forming; and a chill went to my heart which in facing measurable and open peril it had never felt.
"I bring you," he said; "a message that will not, I am afraid, be welcome.

He whose guest you were at Serocasfe invites you to pay him an immediate visit; and the invitation must be accepted at once." I drew myself up with no little indignation at the imperative tone, but feeling at least equal awe at the stern calmness with which the mandate was spoken.
"And what compels me to such haste, or to compliance without consideration ?" "That power," he returned, "which none can resist, and to which you may not demur." Seeing that I still hesitated--in truth, the summons had turned my vague misgiving into intense though equally vague alarm and even terror, which as unmanly and unworthy I strove to repress, but which asserted its domination in a manner as unwonted as unwelcome--he drew aside a fold of his robe, and showed within the silver Star of the Order, supported by the golden sash, that marked a rank second only to that of the wearer of the Signet itself.

I understood too well by this time, through conversations with him and other communications of which it has been needless to speak, the significance of this revelation.