Then suddenly he turned cold, and he felt
his skin roughening. A stealthy step sounded behind him.
He crumpled the Duke's letter in his hand, and in the alarm of the
moment, he dropped it over the wall. Seeking vainly to compose the
features that a chilling fear had now disturbed, he turned to see who
came.
Behind him stood Peppe, his solemn eyes bent with uncanny intentness upon
Gonzaga's face.
"You were seeking me?" quoth Romeo, and the quaver in his voice sorted
ill with his arrogance.
The fool made him a grotesque bow.
"Monna Valentina desires that you attend her in the garden, Illustrious."
CHAPTER XIX
PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT
Peppe's quick eyes had seen Gonzaga crumple and drop the paper, no less
than he had observed the courtier's startled face, and his suspicions had
been aroused. He was by nature prying, and experience had taught him
that the things men seek to conceal are usually the very things it
imports most to have knowledge of. So when Gonzaga had gone, in
obedience to Valentina's summons, the jester peered carefully over the
battlements.
At first he saw nothing, and he was concluding with disappointment that
the thing Gonzaga had cast from him was lost in the torrential waters of
the moat. But presently, lodged on a jutting stone, above the foaming
stream into which it would seem that a miracle had prevented it from
falling, he espied a ball of crumpled paper. He observed with
satisfaction that it lay some ten feet immediately below the postern-gate
by the drawbridge.
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