"It comforts me, Madonna, that there is one, at least, in Roccaleone has
the heart to sing."
Startled out of her happy pensiveness by that smooth and now unutterably
sinister voice, she turned to face its owner.
She saw the white gleam of his face and something of the anger that
smouldered in his eye, and despite herself a thrill of alarm ran through
her like a shudder. She looked beyond him to a spot where lately she had
seen the sentry. There was no one there nor anywhere upon that wall.
They were alone, and Messer Gonzaga looked singularly evil.
For a moment there was a tense silence, broken only by the tumbling
waters of the torrent-moat and the hoarse challenge of a sentry's "Chi va
l??" in Gian Maria's camp. Then she turned nervously, wondering how much
he might have heard of what had passed between herself and Francesco, how
much have seen.
"And yet, Gonzaga," she answered him, "I left you singing below when I
came away."
"--To wanton it here in the moonlight with that damned swashbuckler, that
brigand, that kennel-bred beast of a sbirro!"
"Gonzaga! You would dare!"
"Dare?" he mocked her, beside himself with passion. "Is it you who speak
of daring--you, the niece of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, a lady of the
noble and illustrious house of Rovere, who cast yourself into the arms of
a low-born vassal such as that, a masnadiero, a bandit, a bravo? And can
you yet speak of daring, and take that tone with me, when shame should
strike you either dead or dumb?"
"Gonzaga," she answered him, her face as white as his own, but her voice
steady and hard with anger, "leave me now--upon the instant, or I will
have you flogged--flogged to the bone.
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