Fodesta Gate, but with this difference, that, at last, I overheard
for once what was said, for there was one who did not whisper.

"There goes the leman of my Lord Gambara," quoth a gruff, sneering
voice, "the light of love of the saintly legate who is starving Domenico
to death in a cage for the sin of sacrilege."

Not a doubt but that he would have added more, but that at that moment
a woman's shrill voice drowned his utterance. "Silence, Giuffre!" she
admonished him fearfully. "Silence, on your life!"

I had halted in my stride, suddenly cold from head to foot, as on that
day when I had flung Rinolfo from top to bottom of the terrace steps
at Mondolfo. It happened that I wore a sword for the first time in my
life--a matter from which I gathered great satisfaction--having been
adjudged worthy of the honour by virtue that I was to be Madonna's
escort. To the hilt I now set hand impetuously, and would have turned to
strike that foul slanderer dead, but that Giuliana restrained me, a wild
alarm in her eyes.

"Come!" she panted in a whisper. "Come away!"

So imperious was the command that it conveyed to my mind some notion of
the folly I should commit did I not obey it. I saw at once that did
I make an ensample of this scurrilous scandalmonger I should thereby
render her the talk of that vile town. So I went on, but very white and
stiff, and breathing somewhat hard; for pent-up passion is an evil thing
to house.

Thus came we out of the town and to the shady banks of the gleaming
Po. And then, at last, when we were quite alone, and within two hundred
yards of Fifanti's house, I broke at last the silence.

I had been thinking very busily, and the peasant's words had illumined
for me a score of little obscure matters, had explained to me the queer
behaviour and the odd speeches of Fifanti himself since that evening in
the garden when the Cardinal-legate had announced to him his appointment
as ducal secretary. I checked now in my stride, and turned to face her.

"Was it true?" I asked, rendered brutally direct by a queer pain I felt
as a result of my thinking.

She looked up into my face so sadly and wistfully that my suspicions
fell from me upon the instant, and I reddened from shame at having
harboured them.

"Agostino!" she cried, such a poor little cry of pain that I set my
teeth hard and bowed my head in self-contempt.

Then I looked at her again.

"Yet the foul suspicion of that lout is shared by your hus