or."

"I had believed you so, so...O Agostino!" It was a little wail of pain.

"Set me a penance," I implored her.

"What penance can I set you? Will any penance restore to me my shattered
faith?"

I groaned miserably and covered my face with my hands. It seemed that I
was indeed come to the end of all my hopes; that the world was become as
much a mockery to me as had been the hermitage; that the one was to end
for me upon the discovery of a fraud, as had the other ended--with the
difference that in this case the fraud was in myself.

It seemed, indeed, that our first communion must be our last. Ever since
she had seen me step into that gold-and-purple dining-room at Pagliano,
the incarnation of her vision, as she was the incarnation of mine,
Bianca must have waited confidently for this hour, knowing that it was
foreordained to come. Bitterness and disillusion were all that it had
brought her.

And then, ere more could be said, a thin, flute-like voice hissed down
the vaulted gallery:

"Madonna Bianca! To hide your beauty from our hungry eyes. To quench the
light by which we guide our footsteps. To banish from us the happiness
and joy of your presence! Unkind, unkind!"

It was the Duke. In his white velvet suit he looked almost ghostly in
the deepening twilight. He hobbled towards us, his stick tapping the
black-and-white squares of the marble floor. He halted before her, and
she put aside her emotion, donned a worldly mask, and rose to meet him.

Then he looked at me, and his brooding eyes seemed to scan my face.

"Why! It is Ser Agostino, Lord of Nothing," he sneered, and down the
gallery rang the laugh of my cousin Cosimo, and there came, too, a
ripple of other voices.

Whether to save me from friction with those steely gentlemen who aimed
at grinding me to powder, whether from other motives, Bianca set her
finger-tips upon the Duke's white sleeve and moved away with him.

I leaned against the balustrade all numb, watching them depart. I saw
Cosimo come upon her other side and lean over her as he moved, so slim
and graceful, beside her own slight, graceful figure. Then I sank to the
cushions of the seat she had vacated, and stayed there with my misery
until the night had closed about the place, and the white marble pillars
looked ghostly and unreal.

CHAPTER V. THE WARNING

I prayed that evening more fervently than I had prayed since quitting
Monte Orsaro. It was as if all the influences of m