on the following morning had haunted the street
beneath her window. Pico mentioned it to Giovanni, whereupon Giovanni
told him frankly who it was.

"It was that libertine brother-in-law of mine, the Duke of Gandia," he
said. "Had he persisted, I should have bidden you look to your daughter.
As it is, no doubt he has other things to think of. He is preparing
for his journey to Naples, to accompany his brother Cesare, who goes as
papal legate to crown Federigo of Aragon."

There he left the matter, and no more was heard of it until the night of
June 14th, the very eve of the departure of the Borgia princes upon that
mission.

Cloaked and masked, Giovanni took his way to the Vatican at dusk that
evening, and desired to have himself announced to the Duke. But he was
met with the answer that the Duke was absent; that he had gone to take
leave of his mother and to sup at her villa in Trastevere. His return
was not expected until late.

At first Giovanni feared that, in leaving the consummation of his plot
until the eleventh hour, he had left it too late. In his anxiety he at
once set out on foot, as he was, for the villa of Madonna Giovanna de
Catanei. He reached it towards ten o'clock that night, to be informed
that Gandia was there, at supper. The servant went to bear word to
the Duke that a man in a mask was asking to see him, a message which
instantly flung Gandia into agitation. Excitedly he commanded that the
man be brought to him at once.

The Lord of Pesaro was conducted through the house and out into the
garden to an arbour of vine, where a rich table was spread in the
evening cool, lighted by alabaster lamps. About this table Giovanni
found a noble company of his own relations by marriage. There was
Gandia, who rose hurriedly at his approach, and came to meet him; there
was Cesare, Cardinal of Valencia, who was to go to Naples to-morrow as
papal legate, yet dressed tonight in cloth of gold, with no trace of his
churchly dignity about him; there was their younger brother Giuffredo,
Prince of Squillace, a handsome stripling, flanked by his wife, the
free-and-easy Donna Sancia of Aragon, swarthy, coarse-featured, and
fleshy, despite her youth; there was Giovanni's sometime wife; the
lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the innocent cause of all this hate that
festered in the Lord of Pesaro's soul; there was their mother, the nobly
handsome Giovanozza de Catanei, from whom the Borgias derived their
auburn heads; and t