now rose also, and she looked them over, giving herself the
airs of having spent her virgin life in judging men by their appearance.
It was in vain I tugged her cloak, in vain I murmured the word "wait"
under cover of my hand. She there and then engaged them, and bade them
make ready to set out at once. One more attempt I made to induce her to
alter her resolve.

"Madonna," said I, "it is an unwise thing to go a-journeying by night
with three unknown men, and of such villainous appearance. To me they
seem no better than bandits."

We were standing apart from the others, and she was sipping a cup of
spiced wine that the host had mulled for her. She looked at me with a
tolerant smile.

"They are poor men," said she. "Would you have them robed in velvet?"

"My quarrel is with their looks, Madonna, not their garments," I
answered patiently. She laughed lightly, carelessly; even, I thought, a
trifle scornfully.

"You are very fanciful," said she, then added--"but if so be that you
are afraid to trust yourself in their company, why then, sir, I need
bring you no farther out of the road that you were following when first
we met."

Did the child think that some jealousy actuated me, and prompted me to
inspire her with mistrust of my supplanters? She angered me. Yet now,
more than ever was I resolved to journey with her. Leave her at the
mercy of those ruffians, whom in her ignorance she was mad enough to
trust, I could not--not even had she whipped me. She was so young, so
frail and slight, that none but a craven could have found it in his
heart to have deserted her just then.

"If it please you Madonna," I answered smoothly, "I will make bold to
travel on with you."

It may be that my even accents stung her; perhaps she read in them some
measure of reproof of the ingratitude that lay in her altered bearing
towards me. Her eyes met mine across the table, and seemed to harden as
she looked. Her answer came in a vastly altered tone.

"Why, if you are bent that way, I shall be glad to have you avail
yourself of my escort, Boccadoro."

I had suffered the scorn now of her speech, now of her silence, for
some hours, but never was I so near to turning on her as at that moment;
never so near to consigning her to the fate to which her headstrong
folly was compelling her. That she should take that tone with me!

The violence of the sudden choler I suppressed turned me pale under her
steady glance. So that, seeing it, her ow