nd horror.

"Why should you mistrust me?" she asked, answering my look. "I have been
frank with you. It is not you nor that white-faced ninny I would serve.
You may both go hang for me, though I loved you once, Agostino." And the
sudden tenderness of tone and smile were infinitely mocking. "No, no,
beloved, if I meddle in this at all, it is because my own interests are
in peril."

I shuddered at the cold, matter-of-fact tone in which she alluded to
such interests as those which she could have in Pier Luigi.

"Ay, shrink and cringe, sir saint," she sneered. "Having cast me off
and taken up holiness, you have the right, of course." And with that she
moved past me, and down the terrace-steps without ever turning her head
to look at me again. And that was the last I ever saw of her, as you
shall find, though little was it to have been supposed so then.

I stood hesitating, half minded to go after her and question her more
closely as to what she knew and what she did no more than surmise. But
then I reflected that it mattered little. What really mattered was that
her good advice should be acted upon without delay.

I went towards the house and in the loggia came face to face with
Cosimo.

"Still pursuing the old love," he greeted me, smiling and jerking his
head in the direction of Giuliana. "We ever return to it in the end,
they say; yet you had best have a care. It is not well to cross my Lord
Pier Luigi in such matters; he can be a very jealous tyrant."

I wondered was there some double meaning in the words. I made shift to
pass on, leaving his taunt unanswered, when suddenly he stepped up to me
and tapped my shoulder.

"One other thing, sweet cousin. You little deserve a warning at my
hands. Yet you shall have it. Make haste to shake the dust of Pagliano
from your feet. An evil is hanging over you here."

I looked into his wickedly handsome face, and smiled coldly.

"It is a warning which in my turn I will give to you, you jackal," said
I, and watched the expression of his countenance grow set and frozen,
the colour recede from it.

"What do you mean?" he growled, touched to suspicion of my knowledge by
the term I had employed. "What things has that trull dared to..."

I cut in. "I mean, sir, to warn you. Do not drive me to do more."

We were quite alone. Behind us stretched the long, empty room, before us
the empty gardens. He was without weapons as was I. But my manner was
so fierce that he recoiled befo