Madonna, be pitiful a little. Suffer me to
remain."
She looked down at him, her mind swayed between pity and contempt. Then
pity won the day in the wayward but ever gentle heart of Valentina. She
bade him rise.
"And go, Gonzaga. Get you to bed, and sleep you into a saner frame of
mind. We will forget all this that you have said, so that you never
speak of it again--nor of this love you say you bear me."
The hypocrite caught the hem of her cloak, and bore it to his lips.
"May God keep your heart ever as pure and noble and forgiving," he
murmured brokenly. "I know how little I am deserving of your clemency.
But I shall repay you, Madonna," he protested--and truly meant it, though
not in the sense it seemed.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PENITENT
A week passed peacefully at Roccaleone; so peacefully that it was
difficult to conceive that out there in the plain sat Gian Maria with his
five-score men besieging them.
This inaction fretted the Count of Aquila, as did the lack of news from
Fanfulla; and he wondered vaguely what might be taking place at Babbiano
that Gian Maria should be content to sit idly before them, as though he
had months at his disposal in which to starve them into yielding. The
mystery would have been dispelled had he known that he had Gonzaga to
thank for this singular patience of Gian Maria's. For the courtier had
found occasion to send another letter-carrying shaft into the Duke's
camp, informing him of how and why the last plot had failed, and urging
Gian Maria to wait and trust in him to devise a better scheme for
delivering the castle into his power.
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