Maria, affianced of the Roman King, delighted to
kiss and be kissed, announced herself the shy girl's lover. Pleasure
broke over her face, broke the glaze of her bottomless eyes with a gleam
like the sun's when in still water it betrays deep green paths of light.

She was an enigmatic rogue, so clever that to most she seemed of
unplumbed stupidity. Those blank green eyes of hers, that waxen face,
that scarlet impenetrable mouth, her even gait and look of ruminating,
look of a dolt--who knew Bianca Maria? Not Maximilian the mild-mannered
King; not Duke Ludovic (that creased traitor) who schemed her marriage;
not altogether Lionardo, who painted half her portrait and taught her
much of his wisdom; certainly not poor Molly of Nona. All Milanese were
her lovers, and here was another heart, Molly's, to wit, laid open and
soothed by the little witch's quick hand-stroke. Bianca Maria had all
her secrets with all her love in the first hour of their embracery.

The two girls sat clasped in one chair in that pretty time of dressing
when half is undone and half's to do. Molly, feeling a fool but loving
to have it so, sat in the lap of the younger, who mothered her.

After many days Lionardo, who forgot nothing and never her whom he thus
happened on, glorified her as the Virgin Mary on the knees of Saint
Anne. The indefinite smile, the innocent consciousness, the tender
maiden ways! Wife, mother, handmaid of high God, he thought of her as of
Molly in _apotheosis_; dutiful for love's sake, yet incurably a child,
made for the petting place.

"Grifone the Secretary is your lover, my Molly," said Bianca Maria the
wise.

Molly admitted the sobering truth, and the other pinched her lip.

"Take care of him, my dear. He is more perilous than that stiff husband
you now have. The husband is a trading fool. He uses you as a carrot to
induce donkeys. The other is more curious, and has no use for donkeys.
He will use you otherwise."

"Why, how will he use me then?" said open-eyed Molly. She was vaguely
ill at ease; but the other shammed stupid. All she could be brought to
add was--

"I will take care of you if I can. You will never do here, nor should
ever have come--a lamb among our Lombard wolves. Had you no English
lover, to kill Amilcare and prevent it?"

Molly thought of Gregory Drax, who had been upon the North seas at the
time. Gregory Drax used to lean over the garden gate chewing straws.
This he did by the hour together, to t