bull-calf to
imitate the warbling of a throstle.

Madonna paid him no heed; indeed, she appeared not to have heard him,
for her eyes continued to look past him and at me. At last her lips
parted, and although she scarcely seemed to raise her voice above a
whisper, the word uttered reached my ears across the stillness of the
great room, and the word was "Lazzaro!"

At mention of my name, and at the tone in which it was uttered--a tone
that betrayed same measure of what was in her heart--Ramiro wheeled
sharply in my direction, his brows wrinkling. A certain craftiness he
had, for all that I ever accounted him the dullest-witted clod that ever
rose to his degree of honour. He must have realised how expedient it was
that in all he did he should present himself to Madonna in a favourite
light.

"Release him," he bade the executioners that held me, and in an instant
I was set free. The order given, he turned again to Madonna.

"You have been torturing him," she cried, and her words were hard and
fierce, her eyes blazing. "You shall repent it, Ser Ramiro. The Lord
Cesare Borgia shall hear of it."

Her anger betrayed her more and more, and however hidden it may have
been to her, to me it was exceeding clear that she was encompassing my
destruction. Ramiro laughed easily.

"Madonna, you are at fault. We have not been torturing him, though I
confess that we were on the point of putting him to the question. But
your timely arrival has saved his limbs, for the question we were asking
him concerned your whereabouts!"

I would have shouted to her to be wary how she answered him, for some
premonition how he was about to trick her entered my mind. But realising
the futility of such a course, I held my peace and waited agonisedly.

"You had tortured him in vain then," she answered scornfully. "For
Lazzaro Biancomonte would never have betrayed me. Nor could he have
betrayed me if he would, for after your men had searched the hut in
which I was hidden, I walked to Cattolica thinking foolishly that I
should be safer there."

Lackaday! She had told him the very thing he had sought to know. Yet to
make doubly sure he pursued the scent a little farther.

"Indeed it seems to me that had I tortured him I had given him no
more than he deserved for having abandoned you in that hut. Madonna, I
tremble to think of the harm that might have come to you through that
knave's desertion." And he scowled across at me, much as the Pharisee
mig