"
"I am but a woman, after all," she smiled up at him, "and so, subject to
a woman's weakness. It seemed as if the end were indeed come just now.
It had come, but for you. If they should mutiny----"
"They shall not, while I am here," he answered, with a cheering
confidence. And she, full of faith in this true knight of hers, went to
seek her ladies, and to soothe in her turn any alarm to which they might
have fallen a prey.
Francesco went to disarm, and Gonzaga to take the air upon the ramparts,
his heart a very bag of gall. His hatred for the interloper was as
nothing now to his rage against Valentina, a rage that had its birth in a
wondering uncomprehension of how she should prefer that coarse,
swashbuckling bully to himself, the peerless Gonzaga. And as he walked
there, under the noontide sky, the memory of Francesco's assurance that
the men would not mutiny returned to him, and he caught himself most
ardently desiring that they might, if only to bear it home to Valentina
how misplaced was her trust, how foolish her belief in that loud boaster.
He thought next--and with increasing bitterness--of his own brave
schemes, of his love for Valentina, and of how assured he had been that
his affections were returned, before this ruffler came amongst them. He
laughed in bitter scorn as the thought returned to her preferring
Francesco to himself. Well, it might be so now--now that the times were
warlike, and this Francesco was such a man as shone at his best in them.
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