erceptible
degrees she learned that Rome might give no ease to her feet. He had her
in the saddle and all the baggage-mules away an hour after the sun.

Arrived at Foligno, he found that his great enemy was at sanctuary in
the Convent of Olivet, biting his nails in a red fume there. Hidden
behind spires of cypress, Olivet stood outside the walls, a sun-dyed
white building deep under brown eaves. Cesare, it was reported, was
quite alone with his moods, now consumed by fidgety remorse for what he
might have lost in his brother's blood, now confident and inclined to
blusterous hilarity, now shuddering under an obsession of nerves. In any
guise he was dangerous, but worst of all when the black fit of suspicion
was upon him. So he now seemed; for being told who waited upon him, he
refused point-blank to see anybody. Amilcare, at the door, heard his
"Vattene, vattene! Non seccami!" ("Out, out! Don't pester me!") rocking
down the dim passages of the house; and Molly, whom this sudden new
expedition had bereft of what wit she had, turned pale to hear the
roaring beast.

"Ah, love, love, love, let us run away! I like not this empty place,"
whimpered the girl, holding her husband's arm; but he gently removed her
hand, kissed it, and held it.

"Courage, dear one; I shall be by thy side. Much depends upon this
adventure," he urged in fervent whispers, knowing how much to a tittle.

To the monk who came out, distended with Cesare's explosives, he
addressed himself in a vernacular too fluid for Molly to catch up.

"I pray you, reverend brother, recommend me yet once more to the feet of
his Resplendency, saying that not I alone supplicate his favours. Add
that I have with me, to present, my most beautiful wife, that she may
assure him with her own lips how very much she is his slave."

The pantomime of piteous beseeching hands, of eyebrows exquisitely
arched, told more than his words. They showed to a hair's breadth how
far he expected, how far was prepared, to tempt his customer. No pedlar
before a doorful of girls' sidelong heads could more deftly have
marketed his wares. The monk, too, sidled his head; he pursed his mouth,
furrowed with a finger in his dewlap, tried to appraise the wares. But
to allow this would have been to forestall the market.

"Ah, for love of the saints, go, my brother!" he was entreated, with
gentle persistence; and so worked upon, he waddled away.

Amilcare let fall a hearty sigh, and considered Moll