t the Holy Office, they can issue a ban against
you, and that against such a ban not even the Emperor can defend you?
Indeed, if they told him that his feudatory, the Lord of Pagliano,
had been guilty of contumaciously thwarting the ends of the Holy
Inquisition, that bigot Charles V would be the first to deliver you over
to the ghastly practices of that tribunal. It should not need, my lord,
that I should tell you this."

"My God!" he groaned in utter misery. "But you, Agostino?"

"There is nothing against me," I answered impatiently. "What sacrilege
have I ever committed? The thing is a trumped-up business, conceived
with a foul purpose by Messer Pier Luigi there. Courage, then, and
self-restraint; and thus we shall foil their aims. Come, my lord, I will
ride to Rome with them. And do not doubt that I shall return very soon."

He looked at me with eyes that were full of trouble, indecision in
every line of a face that was wont to look so resolute. He knew himself
between the sword and the wall.

"I would that Galeotto were here!" cried that man usually so
self-reliant. "What will he say to me when he comes? You were a sacred
charge, boy."

"Say to him that I will be returning shortly--which must be true. Come,
then. You may serve me this way. The other way you will but have to
endure ultimate arrest, and so leave Bianca at their mercy, which is
precisely what they seek."

He braced himself at the thought of Bianca. We turned, and in silence
we paced back, quite leisurely as if entirely at our ease, for all that
Cavalcanti's face had grown very haggard.

"I yield me, sir," I said to the familiar.

"A wise decision," sneered the Duke.

"I trust you'll find it so, my lord," I answered, sneering too.

They led forward a horse for me, and when I had embraced Cavalcanti,
I mounted and my funereal escort closed about me. We rode across the
courtyard under the startled eyes of the folk of Pagliano, for the
familiars of the Holy Office were dread and fearful objects even to the
stoutest-hearted man. As we neared the gateway a shrill cry rang out on
the morning air:

"Agostino!"

Fear and tenderness and pain were all blent in that cry.

I swung round in the saddle to behold the white form of Bianca, standing
in the gallery with parted lips and startled eyes that were gazing after
me, her arms outheld. And then, even as I looked, she crumpled and sank
with a little moan into the arms of the ladies who were with he