Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookeward of all that I have done, all that I have risked, all that I have sacrificed to serve you. It were of a piece with your other actions." Her eyes sought his in the gloom, her bosom heaving wildly in her endeavours to master herself before she spoke. "Messer Gonzaga," said she at last, "I'll not deny that you served me faithfully in the matter of my escape from Urbino----" "Why speak of it?" he sneered. "It was a service of which you but avail yourself until another offered on whom you might bestow your favour and the supreme command of your fortress. Why speak of it?" "To show you that the service you allude to is now paid," she riposted sternly. "By reproaching me you have taken payment, and by insulting me you have stamped out my gratitude." "A most convenient logic yours," he mocked. "I am cast aside like an outworn garment, and the garment is accounted paid for because through much hard usage it has come to look a little threadbare." And now it entered her mind that perhaps there was some justice in what he said. Perhaps she had used him a little hardly. "Do you think, Gonzaga," she said, and her tone was now a shade more gentle, "that because you have served me you may affront me, and that knight who has served me, also, and----" "In what can such service as his compare with mine? What has he done that I have not done more?" "Why, when the men rebelled here----" "Bah! Cite me not that. Body of God! it is his trade to lead such swine. He is one of themselves. But for the rest, what has such a man as this to lose by his share in your rebellion, compared with such a loss as mine must be?" "Why, if things go ill, I take it he may lose his life," she answered, in a low voice. "Can you lose more?" He made a gesture of impatience. "If things go ill--yes. It may cost him dearly. But if they go well, and this siege is raised, he has nothing more to fear. Mine is a parlous case. However ends this siege, for me there will be no escape from the vengeance of Gian Maria and Guidobaldo. They know my share in it. They know that your action was helped by me, and that without me you could never have equipped yourself for such resistance. Whatever may betide you and this Ser Franceseo, for me there will be no escape." She drew a deep breath, then set him the obvious question: "Did you not consider it--did you not weigh these chances--before you embarked upon this business, before you, yourself, urged me to this step?" "Aye, did I," he answered sullenly. "Then, why these complaints now?" He was singularly, madly frank with her in his reply. He told her that he had done it because he loved her, because she had given him signs that his love was not in vain. "I gave you signs?" she interrupted him. "Mother in Heaven! Recite these signs that I may know them." "Were you not ever kind to me?" he demanded. "Did you not ever manifest a liking for my company? Were you not ever pleased that I should sing to you the songs that in your honour I had made? Was it not to me you turned in the hour of your need?" "See now how poor a thing you are, Gonzaga?" she answered witheringly. "A woman may not smile on you, may not give you a kind word, may not suffer you to sing to her, but you must conclude she is enamoured of you. And if I turned to you in my hour of need, as you remind me, needs that be a sign of my infatuation? Does every cavalier so think when a helpless woman turns to him in her distress? But even so," she continued, "how should all that diminish the peril you now talk of? Even were your suit with me to prosper, would that make you any the less Romeo Gonzaga, the butt of the anger of my uncle and Gian Maria? Rather do I think that it should make you more." But he disillusioned her. He did not scruple, in his angry mood, to lay before her his reasonings that as her husband he would be screened. She laughed aloud at that. "And so it is by such sophistries as these that your presumption came to life?" That stung him. Quivering with the passion that obsessed him, he stepped close up to her. "Tell me, Madonna--why shall we account presumption in Romeo Gonzaga a suit that in a nameless adventurer we encourage?" he asked, his voice thick and tremulous. "Have a care," she bade him. "A care of what?" he flashed back. "Answer me, Monna Valentina. Am I so base a man that by the very thought of love for you I must presume, whilst you can give yourself into the arms of this swashbuckling bravo, and take his kisses? Your reasoning sorts ill with your deeds." "Craven!" she answered him. "Dog that you are!" And before the blaze of passion in her eyes he recoiled, his courage faltering. She cropped her anger in mid-career, and in a dangerously calm voice she bade him see to it that by morning he was no longer in Roccaleone. "Profit by the night," she counselled him, "and escape the vigilance of Gian Maria as best you can. Here you shall not stay." At that a great fear took possession of him, putting to flight the last remnant of his anger. Nor fear alone was it, to do him full justice. It was also the realisation that if he would take payment from her for this treatment of him, if he would slake his vengeance, he must stay. One plan had failed him. But his mind was fertile, and he might devise another that might succeed and place Gian Maria in Roccaleone. Thus should he be amply venged. She was turning away, having pronounced his banishment, but he sprang after her, and upon his knees he now besought her piteously to hear him yet awhile. And she, regretting her already of her harshness, and thinking that perhaps in his jealousy he had been scarce responsible for what he had said, stood still to hear him. "Not that, not that, Madonna," he wailed, his tone suggesting the imminence of tears. "Do not send me away. If die I must, let me die here at Roccaleone, helping the defence to my last breath. But do not cast me out to fall into the hands of Gian Maria. He will hang me for my share in this business. Do not requite me thus, Madonna. You owe me a little, surely, and if I was mad when I talked to you just now, it was love of you that drove me--love of you and suspicion of that man of whom none of us know anything. Madonna, be pitiful a little. Suffer me to remain." She looked down at him, her mind swayed between pity and contempt. Then pity won the day in the wayward but ever gentle heart of Valentina. She bade him rise. "And go, Gonzaga. Get you to bed, and sleep you into a saner frame of mind. We will forget all this that you have said, so that you never speak of it again--nor of this love you say you bear me." The hypocrite caught the hem of her cloak, and bore it to his lips. "May God keep your heart ever as pure and noble and forgiving," he murmured brokenly. "I know how little I am deserving of your clemency. But I shall repay you, Madonna," he protested--and truly meant it, though not in the sense it seemed. CHAPTER XXI. THE PENITENT A week passed peacefully |