the
room that holds him if you would buy your dirty life."

"He is not here," wailed the fellow.

"You lie, you hound," said Cavalcanti, and turning to me--"Finish him,
Agostino," he bade me.

The man under me writhed, filled now by the terror that Cavalcanti had
so cunningly known how to inspire in him. "I swear to God that he is not
here," he answered, and but that fear had robbed him of his voice, he
would have screamed it. "Gesu! I swear it--it is true!"

I looked up at Cavalcanti, baffled, and sick with sudden dismay. I saw
Cavalcanti's eye, which had grown dull, kindle anew. He stooped over the
prostrate man.

"Is the bride here--is my daughter in this house?"

The fellow whimpered and did not answer until my dagger's edge was at
his throat again. Then he suddenly screeched--"Yes!"

In an instant I had dragged him to his feet again, his pretty clothes
and daintily curled hair all crumpled, so that he looked the most
pitiful thing in all the world.

"Lead us to her chamber," I bade him.

And he obeyed as men obey when the fear of death is upon them.

CHAPTER X. THE NUPTIALS OF BIANCA

An awful thought was in my mind as we went, evoked by the presence in
such a place of one of the Duke's gentlemen; an awful question rose
again and again to my lips, and yet I could not bring myself to utter
it.

So we went on in utter silence now, my hand upon his shoulder, clutching
velvet doublet and flesh and bone beneath it, my dagger bare in my other
hand.

We crossed an antechamber whose heavy carpet muffled our footsteps, and
we halted before tapestry curtains that masked a door, Here, curbing my
fierce impatience, I paused. I signed to the five attendant soldiers to
come no farther; then I consigned the courtier who had guided us to the
care of Falcone, and I restrained Cavalcanti, who was shaking from head
to foot.

I raised the heavy, muffling curtain, and standing there an instant by
the door, I heard my Bianca's voice, and her words seemed to freeze the
very marrow in my bones.

"O, my lord," she was imploring in a choking voice, "O, my lord, have
pity on me!"

"Sweet," came the answer, "it is I who beseech pity at your hands. Do
you not see how I suffer? Do you not see how fiercely love of you is
torturing me--how I burn--that you can so cruelly deny me?"

It was Farnese's voice. Cosimo, that dastard, had indeed carried out the
horrible compact of which Giuliana had warned me, carried it o