"
For a second their glances met, quivered in the meeting, and fell apart
again, an odd confusion in the breast of each, all of which Gonzaga, sunk
in moody rumination, observed not. To lighten the awkward silence that
was fallen, she asked him how it had transpired so soon that it was to
Roccaleone she had fled.
"Do you not know?" he cried. "Has not Peppe told you?"
"I have had no speech with him. He but reached the castle, himself, late
last night, and I first saw him this morning when he came to announce
your presence."
And then, before more could be said, there arose a din of shouting from
without. The door was pushed suddenly open, and Peppe darted into the
room.
"Your man, Ser Francesco," he cried, his face white with excitement.
"Come quickly, or they will kill him."
CHAPTER XIV
FORTEMANI DRINKS WATER
The thing had begun with the lowering glances that Francesco had
observed, and had grown to gibes and insults after he had disappeared.
But Lanciotto had preserved an unruffled front, being a man schooled in
the Count of Aquila's service to silence and a wondrous patience. This
insensibility those hinds translated into cowardice, and emboldened by
it--like the mongrels that they were--their offensiveness grew more
direct and gradually more threatening. Lanciotto's patience was slowly
oozing away, and indeed, it was no longer anything but the fear of
provoking his master's anger that restrained him. At length one burly
ruffian, who had bidden him remove his head-piece in the company of
gentlemen, and whose request had been by Lanciotto as disregarded as the
rest, advanced menacingly towards him and caught him by the leg, as
Ercole had caught his master.
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