uld defeat the ends of the House of Borgia. Not
until then did I seem to bethink me that he was the servant of that
house, and his readiness to betray the hand that paid him sowed mistrust
and a certain loathing of him in my mind. I let him see it, perhaps,
which was unwise, and, may be, even ungrateful. He seemed deeply
wounded, and the subject was abandoned. But I have since thought that
perhaps I acted with a rashness that was--"

"With a rashness that was eminently justifiable," I interrupted her.
"You could not have been better advised than to have mistrusted such a
man."

But touching this same Governor of Cesena, there was a fine surprise in
store for me. At dusk some two days later there was a sudden commotion
in the courtyard of the Palace, and when I inquired of a groom into its
cause, I was informed that his Excellency the Governor of Cesena had
arrived.

Curious to see this man whose willingness to betray the house he served,
where Madonna was concerned, was by no means difficult to probe, I
descended to the banqueting-hall at supper time.

They were not yet at table when I entered, and a group was gathered in
the centre of the room about a huge man, at sight of whose red head and
crimson, brutal face I would have turned and sought again the refuge of
my own quarters but that his wolf's eye had already fastened on me.

"Body of God!" he swore, and that was all. But his eyes were on me in a
marvellous stare, as were now--impelled by that oath of his--the eyes
of all the company. We looked at each other for a moment, then a great
laugh burst from him, shaking his vast bulk and wrinkling his hideous
face. He thrust the intervening men aside as if they had been a growth
of sedges he would penetrate, and he advanced towards me; the Lord
Filippo and his sister looking on with all the rest in interested
surprise.

In front of me he halted, and setting his hands on his hips he regarded
me with a brutal mirth.

"What may your trade be now?" he asked at last contemptuously.

I had taken rapid stock of him in the seconds that were sped, and from
the surpassing richness of his apparel, his gold-broidered doublet and
crimson, fur-edged surcoat, I knew that Messer Ramiro del' Orca was
grown to the high estate of Governor of Cesena.

"A new trade even as yours," I answered him.

"Nay, that is no answer," he cried, overlooking my offensiveness. "Do
you still follow the trade of arms?"

"I think," Filippo inter