Imposingly tall, his youthful lankness dissembled by his dress, he drew the eyes of the court as he advanced to pay homage to the Duke.
Thereafter he was held awhile in friendly talk by della Torre and the Archbishop. It was in escaping at last from these that he found himself suddenly looking into the solemn eyes of the Princess Valeria, of whose presence in Milan this was his first intimation.
She stood a little apart from the main throng under the fretted minstrel’s gallery, at the end of the long hall, with the handsome Monna Dionara for only companion.
Startled, he turned first red, then white, under the shock of that unexpected encounter. He had a feeling, under those inscrutable eyes, of being detected, stripped of his fine trappings and audacious carriage, and discovered for an upstart impostor, the son of nobody, impudently ruffling it among the great.
Thus an instant. Then, recovering his poise, he went forward with leisurely dignity to make his bow, in which there was nothing rustic.
She coloured slightly. Her eyes kindled, and she drew back as if to depart. A single interjectory word escaped her: “Audacious!”
“Lady, I thank you for the word. It shall supply the motto I still lack: ‘Audax,’ remembering that ‘Audaces fortuna juvat.’ ”
She had not been a woman had she not answered him.
“Fortune has favoured you already. You prosper, sir.”
“By God’s grace, madonna.”
“God has less to do with it, I think, than your own arts.”
“My arts?” He questioned not the word, but the meaning she applied to it.
“Such arts as Judas used. You should study the end he made.”
On that she would have gone, but the sharpness of his tone arrested her.
“Madonna, if ever I practised those arts, it was in your service, and a reproach is a poor requital.”
“In my service!” Her eyes momentarily blazed. “Was it in my service that you came to spy upon me and betray me? Was it in my service that you murdered Enzo Spigno?” She smiled with terrible bitterness. “I have, you see, no illusions left of the service that you did me.”
“No illusions!” His voice was wistful. She reasoned much as he had feared that she would reason. “Lord God! You are filled with illusions; the result of inference; and I warned you, madonna, that inference is not your strength.”
“You poor buffoon! Will you pretend that you did not murder Spigno?”
“Of course I did.”
The admission amazed her where she had expected denial.
“You confess it? You dare to confess it?”
“So that in future you may assert with knowledge what you have not hesitated to assert upon mere suspicion. Shall I inform you of the reason at the same time? I killed Count Spigno because he was the spy sent by your uncle to betray you, so that your brother’s ruin might be accomplished.”
“Spigno!” she cried in so loud a voice of indignation that her lady clutched her arm to impose caution. “You say that of Spigno? He was the truest, bravest friend I ever knew, and his murder shall be atoned if there is a justice in heaven. It is enough.”
“Not yet, madonna. Consider only that one circumstance which intrigued the Podestà of Casale: that at dead of night, when all Barbaresco’s household was asleep, only Count Spigno and I were afoot and fully dressed. Into what tale does that fit besides the lie I told the Podestà? Shall I tell you?”
“Shall I listen to one who confesses himself a liar and murderer?”
“Alas! Both: in the service of an ungracious lady. But hear now the truth.”
Briefly and swiftly he told it.
“I am to believe that?” she asked him in sheer scorn. “I am to be so false to the memory of one who served me well and faithfully as to credit this tale of his baseness upon no better word than yours? Why, it is a tale which even if true must brand you for a beast. This man, whatever he may have been, was moved to rescue you, you say, from certain doom; and all the return you made him for that act of charity was to stab him!”
He wrung his hands in despair. “Oh, the perversity of your reasoning! But account me a beast if you will for the deed. Yet admit that the intention was selfless. Judge the result. I killed Count Spigno to make you safe, and safe it has made you. If I had other aims, if I were an agent to destroy you, why did I not speak out in the Podestà’s court?”
“Because your unsupported word would hardly have sufficed to doom persons of our condition.”
“Which again is precisely why I killed Count Spigno: because if he had lived, he would have supported it. Is it becoming clear?”
“Clear? Shall I tell you what is clear? That you killed Spigno in self-defence when he discovered you for the Judas that you were. Oh, believe me, it is very clear. To make it so there are your lies to me, your assertion that you were a poor nameless scholar who had imposed himself upon the Marquis Theodore by the pretence of being Facino Cane’s son. A pretence you said it was. You’ll deny that now.”
Some of his assurance left him. “No. I don’t deny it.”
“You’ll tell me, perhaps, that
