"You have little cause to be. Have things fallen out other than we
expected?"
"Perhaps not. Yet I had hoped that Gian Maria would not allow his humour
to carry him so far."
"You had hoped that--after the message Messer Francesco brought us?" And
she looked him over with an eye of sudden understanding. "Yet you
expressed no such hope when you advised this flight to Roccaleone. You
were all for fighting then. A martial ardour consumed you. Whence this
change? Is it the imminence of danger that gives it a reality too grim
for your appetite?"
There was a scorn in her words that wounded him as she meant it should.
His last night's rashness had shown her the need to leave him in no false
opinion of the extent of her esteem, and, in addition, those last words
of his had shown him revealed in a new light, and she liked him the less
by it.
He inclined his head slightly, shame blazing red in his cheeks, that he
should be thus reproved before Fortemani and that upstart Francesco.
That Francesco was an upstart was no longer a matter of surmise with him.
His soul assured him of it.
"Madonna," he said, with some show of dignity, ignoring her gibes, "I
came to bear you news that a herald from Gian Maria craves a hearing.
Shall I hold parley with him for you?"
"You are too good," she answered sweetly. "I will hear the man myself."
He bowed submissively, and then his eye moved to Francesco.
"We might arrange with him for the safe-conduct of this gentleman," he
suggested.
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