nspicuous part.

More than once I was on the point of addressing Bianca herself, but
always courage failed me. I had ever in mind the memory she must have of
me as she had last seen me, to increase the painful diffidence which her
presence itself imposed upon me. Nor did I hear her voice more than once
or twice when she demurely answered such questions as her father set
her. And though once or twice I found her stealing a look at me, she
would instantly avert her eyes when our glances crossed.

Thus was our first meeting, and for a little time it was to be our last,
because I lacked the courage to seek her out. She had her own apartments
at Pagliano with her own maids of honour, like a princess; and the
castle garden was entirely her domain into which even her father seldom
intruded. He gave me the freedom of it; but it was a freedom of which I
never took advantage in the week that we abode there. Several times
was I on the point of doing so. But I was ever restrained by my
unconquerable diffidence.

And there was something else to impose restraint upon me. Hitherto the
memory of Giuliana had come to haunt me in my hermitage, by arousing in
me yearnings which I had to combat with fasting and prayer, with scourge
and dice. Now the memory of her haunted me again; but in a vastly
different way. It haunted me with the reminder of all the sin in which
through her I had steeped myself; and just as the memory of that sin had
made me in purer moments deem myself unworthy to be the guardian of
the shrine on Monte Orsaro, so now did it cause me to deem myself
all unworthy to enter the garden that enshrined Madonna Bianca de'
Cavalcanti.

Before the purity that shone from her I recoiled in an awe whose nature
was as the feelings of a religion. I felt that to seek her presence
would be almost to defile her. And so I abstained, my mind very full
of her the while, for all that the time was beguiled for me in daily
exercise with horse and arms under the guidance of Galeotto.

I was not so tutored merely for the sake of repairing a grave omission
in my education. It had a definite scope, as Galeotto frankly told me,
informing me that the time approached in which to avenge my father and
strike a blow for my own rights.

And then at the end of a week a man rode into the courtyard of Pagliano
one day, and flung down from his horse shouting to be led to Messer
Galeotto. There was something about this courier's mien and person that
a