nger.

"Where is he?" he repeated, and old Falcone's fingers fell idle upon the
buckle on which they were engaged.

Cavalcanti's answer was a groan. He flung his long arms to the ceiling,
as if invoking Heaven's aid; then he let them fall again heavily, all
strength gone out of them.

Galeotto stood an instant looking at him and turning very white.
Suddenly he stepped forward, leaving Falcone upon his knees.

"What is this?" he said, his voice a rumble of thunder. "Where is the
boy? I say."

The Lord of Pagliano could not meet the gaze of those steel coloured
eyes.

"O God!" he groaned. "How shall I tell you?"

"Is he dead?" asked Galeotto, his voice hard.

"No, no--not dead. But... But..." The plight of one usually so strong, so
full of mastery and arrogance, was pitiful.

"But what?" demanded the condottiero. "Gesu! Am I a woman, or a man
without sorrows, that you need to stand hesitating? Whatever it may be,
speak, then, and tell me."

"He is in the clutches of the Holy Office," answered Cavalcanti
miserably.

Galeotto looked at him, his pallor increasing. Then he sat down
suddenly, and, elbows on knees, he took his head in his hands and spoke
no word for a spell, during which time Falcone, still kneeling, looked
from one to the other in an agony of apprehension and impatience to hear
more.

Neither noticed the presence of the equerry; nor would it have mattered
if they had, for he was trusty as steel, and they had no secrets from
him.

At last, having gained some measure of self-control, Galeotto begged to
know what had happened, and Cavalcanti related the event.

"What could I do? What could I do?" he cried when he had finished.

"You let them take him?" said Galeotto, like a man who repeats the thing
he has been told, because he cannot credit it. "You let them take him?"

"What alternative had I?" groaned Cavalcanti, his face ashen and seared
with pain.

"There is that between us, Ettore, that... that will not let me credit
this, even though you tell it me."

And now the wretched Lord of Pagliano began to use the very arguments
that I had used to him. He spoke of Cosimo's suit of his daughter, and
how the Duke sought to constrain him to consent to the alliance. He
urged that in this matter of the Holy Office was a trap set for him to
place him in Farnese's power.

"A trap?" roared the condottiero, leaping up. "What trap? Where is this
trap? You had five score men-at-arms under your orders