ng, if possible, yellower and more sour and lean than usual. He
was arrayed in his long, rusty gown, and there were the usual shabby
slippers on his long, lean feet. He was ever a man of most indifferent
personal habits.

"Ah, Astorre," his wife greeted him. "My Lord Cardinal brings you good
tidings."

"Does he so?" quoth Fifanti, sourly as I thought; and he looked at
the legate as though his excellency were the very reverse of a happy
harbinger.

"You will rejoice, I think, doctor," said the smiling prelate, "to hear
that I have letters from my Lord Pier Luigi appointing you one of the
ducal secretaries. And this, I doubt not, will be followed, on his
coming hither, by an appointment to his council. Meanwhile, the stipend
is three hundred ducats, and the work is light."

There followed a long and baffling silence, during which the doctor grew
first red, then pale, then red again, and Messer Gambara stood with his
scarlet cloak sweeping about his shapely limbs, sniffing his pomander
and smiling almost insolently into the other's face; and some of the
insolence of his look, I thought, was reflected upon the pale, placid
countenance of Giuliana.

At last, Fifanti spoke, his little eyes narrowing.

"It is too much for my poor deserts," he said curtly.

"You are too humble," said the prelate. "Your loyalty to the House of
Farnese, and the hospitality which I, its deputy, have received..."

"Hospitality!" barked Fifanti, and looked very oddly at Giuliana; so
oddly that a faint colour began to creep into her cheeks. "You would pay
for that?" he questioned, half mockingly. "Oh, but for that a stipend of
three hundred ducats is too little."

And all the time his eyes were upon his wife, and I saw her stiffen as
if she had been struck.

But the Cardinal laughed outright. "Come now, you use me with an amiable
frankness," he said. "The stipend shall be doubled when you join the
council."

"Doubled?" he said. "Six hundred...?" He checked. The sum was vast. I
saw greed creep into his little eyes. What had troubled him hitherto,
I could not fathom even yet. He washed his bony hands in the air, and
looked at his wife again. "It... it is a fair price, no doubt, my lord,"
said he, his tone contemptuous.

"The Duke shall be informed of the value of your learning," lisped the
Cardinal.

Fifanti knit his brows. "The value of my learning?" he echoed, as if
slowly puzzled. "My learning? Oh! Is that in question?"

"Why else