moving lips, and strained-out arms
how every breath she took was to him also an inspiration. Her frankness,
the truth lucent in her eyes, her abounding receptivity,--for she
believed everything she was told and objected to nothing,--her sweet
long body, the tired grace with which she carried her lovely head, her
tender, stroking ways, the evenness of her temper (which only that of
her teeth could surpass),--all this threatened to make of Amilcare a
poet or a saint, something totally disparate to his immediate proposals.
His nature saved him for the game which his nature had taught him.

In that great game he had to play Molly (though he loved her dearly)
must be, he saw, his prime counter. Coming to England to negotiate bills
of exchange, he had Molly thrown in. She would do more for him than
rose-nobles. He ecstatised over his adorable capture; but saw no reason
in that why he should not lay it out to advantage. It would not cheapen
in the chaffer; on the contrary, give him the usufruct for a few years,
and he would be not only the happiest but the most considerable of men.
Triumphant Bacchus! (so he mused to himself) what had he not gained? A
year's pay for his men, the confidence of the "Signori" of Nona, the
acclamations of the Piazza and the Council Chamber at once--and Molly
Lovel. Hey! that was best of all. For her sake, and by her means, he
would be Capitano del Popolo. What else? That would do for a beginning.
If Molly could turn his head, she could turn other heads, he supposed. A
turned head meant a disponable body, a bending back, an obsequious knee,
even a carcase at a quick hand's discretion; votes in Council, delirium
in the Piazza, _Te Deum_ in the Church. Amilcare knew his countrymen: he
that knows them half as well will have no trouble in conceiving how
these trade-calculations can consist with a great deal of true love.
And what was Amilcare's trade? His trade was politics, the stock whereof
was the people of Nona, the shifty, chattering, light-weight spawn of
one of those little burnt-brick and white cities of the Lombard
Plain--set deep in trees, domed, belfried, full of gardens and fountains
and public places--which owed their independence to being too near a
pair of rival states to be worth either's conquering. There were some
score of these strewn over Southern Emilia and Romagna in those days,
and the time was almost at hand, and with it the man, to sweep them all
into one common net of wretched